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THE 



MOHAMMEDAN 



MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 



BY THE 

Eev. HENEY H. JESSUP, D.D., 

For Twenty-four Years Missionary in Syria. 



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PHILADELPHIA : 

PKESBYTEKIAN BOAED OF PUBLICATION, 

No. 1334 CHESTNUT STREET. 



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Copyright, 1879, by 

THE TRUSTEES OF THE 

PEESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION. 



Westcott & Thomson, 
Stereotypers and Electrotypers, Fhilada, 



mTEODIJCTORT NOTE. 



A DISCOURSE on " The Mohammedan Mis- 
sionary Problem," delivered before the Gen- 
eral Assembly of the Presbyterian Church 
in the United States, meeting at Saratoga 
Springs May 18, 1879, by the Moderator, 
the Rev. Henry H. Jessup, D. D., of 
Beirut, Syria, attracted general attention, 
and awakened a desire on the part of 
many to have it in print. In compliance 
with this demand, and at the request of 
the Presbyterian Board of Publication, Dr. 
Jessup has rewritten and enlarged the dis- 
course, and the result is here given to the 
public. 



PEEFACE, 



This little treatise does not profess to be 
an exhaustive statement of the relations of 
Islam and Christianity. It is a mere out- 
line. It is published in deference to the 
earnest request of friends who have thought 
it worth preserving in a permanent form. 

The map accompanying this volume is 
taken from that printed in Stobart's Islain, 
published by the Christian Knowledge So- 
ciety. The green shading has been ex- 
tended over parts of China not marked in 
the original, to indicate the existence of 
four millions of Moslems in that empire. 
This is the only correction made in this 
map, for which I would express very great 
obligations to Principal Stobart. 



6 PREFACE, 

The Arabic pronunciation of the name 
of the founder of Islam requires that the 
English word be written Muhammad, but 
I have followed the ordinary spelling, Mo- 
hammed. It is unfortunate that Stobart, 
following Irving, should have adopted a 
form of the name so utterly wrong as 
" Mahomet." 

The number of 'Mohammedans in the 
world is given in this work as one hun- 
dred and seventy-five millions. Mr. Keith 
Johnston estimates it as follows : 

In Europe 5,974,000 

In Africa 50,416,000 

In Asia 112,739,000 

Total ..169,129,000 

It does not probably vary far from one 
hundred and seventy or one hundred and 
seventy-five millions. 

Inquiry is often made for the best books 
on Mohammedanism. The following is a 
list of the more important: 



PREFACE, 7 

1. lutroductory Essay of Sale's Koran: 
Lipj)incott. 

2. The Preface and Notes of Eodwell's 
Koran: Williams & Norgate, London. 

3. Sir William Muir's Life of Mohammed: 
London. 

4. Stobart's Islam and its Founder: Chris- 
tian Knowledge Society. 

5. Dr. Sprenger's Life of Mohammed: 
Allahabad, 1851. 

6. Dr. Pfander's Mezan el Hoc : Church 
Missionary Society, London. 

7. Irving's Life of Mahomet. 

8. Lane's Modern Egyptians, 

9. R. Bosworth Smith's Mohammed and 
Mohammedanism : Harpers. 

10. Eey. T. P. Hughes's Notes on Mo- 
hammedanism. 

11. Osborn's Islam under the Arabs: 
Longmans, Green & Co. 

12. The Coran, Sir William Muir : Chris- 
tian Knowledge Society. 



8 PREFACE, 

13. Dr. Hamlin's Among the Turhs : 
Robert Carter & Brother. 

14. Burton's Pilgrimage to El Medinah 
and Mecca : Putnam & Co. 

15. Clark's The Arabs and the Turhs: 
Dodd & Mead. 

16. Eev. T. Milner's Turhish Empire: 
Religious Tract Society, London. 

17. Report of Conference on Foreign Mis- 
sions, Mildmay, 1878. J. F. Shaw & Co., 
London. 

18. 2'he Trident, the Crescent and the 
Cross, Vaughan. Longmans, London. 

19. Islam and Christianity, J. M. Arnold. 
Longmans. 

20. Christianity and Islam, Stephens. 
See also the list of authorities in the 

preface to Bosworth Smith's Mohammed. 

The works of Syed Ahmed Khan Baha- 
dor and Syed Ameer Ali are an attempt at 
a refutation of Sir William Muir's indict- 
ment of Mohammedanism, written by Mos- 
lems. There is a great assumption of learn- 



PREFACE. 9 

ing and a sophistical defence of the Koranic 
teachings with regard to slayery, polygamy, 
divorce and the degradation of woman. 

The multiplication of books on this sub- 
ject shows its growing importance. 

It is our earnest hope and prayer that this 
revival of interest in the historical, theolog- 
ical and ethical bearings of Islamism may 
result in a new practical interest in the spir- 
itual welfare of the Mohammedan nations. 
It is high time for the Christian Church 
to ask seriously the question whether the 
last command of Christ, ^^ Preach the gos- 
pel to every creature/' concerns the one 
hundred and seventy-five millions of the 
Mohammedan world. 

HENKY H. JESSUP. 

MONTKOSE, PeNNA., 1 

July 16, 1879. J 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 



A. D. 

570. Birth of Mohammed, at Mecca. 

590. Gregory I. becomes bishop of Eome. 

597. Mission to the Saxons in Britain. 

609. Mohammed proclaims his pretensions. 

622. The Hejra, or flight of Mohammed from Mecca to 
Medina. 

632. Death of Mohammed. 

632. Abu Bekir, first caliph or successor of Mohammed. 

636. Capture of Jerusalem by the caliph Omar. 

640. Capture of Alexandria by Omar. 

711. Tharyk crosses the straits from Africa to Europe, and 
calls the mountain Jebel Tharyk (Gribraltar). 

732. Battle of Tours ; Abd-er-Eahman defeated by Charles 
Martel ; Western Europe saved from becoming Mos- 
lem, 

786. Haroun er-Rashid, caliph of Baghdad. 

1063. Alp Arslan, Seljukian Turkish prince. 

1299— 

-J ooft Eeign of Othman, founder of the Ottoman dynasty. 

1452. Perfection of art of printing in Mentz by Guttenburg, 
Faust and Schoeffer. 
10 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE, 11 

1453. Capture of Constantinople by Mohammed II. ; exodus 
of Greek scholars to Southern Europe. 

1492. Discovery of America by Columbus. 

1492, July 2. Boabdil (or Abou Abdallah) defeated by Fer- 
dinand at Granada ; end of Moslem rule in Spain. 

1517. Ottoman sultan Selim I. conquers Egypt, wrests the 
caliphate from the Arab line of Koreish through 
Motawekkel Billah, and transfers it to the Ottoman 
sultans; Ottoman caliphate never acknowledged by 
Persian or Moorish Moslems. 

1683. Final check of Turks at gates of Vienna by John 
Sobieski, king of Poland, Sept. 12 ; Eastern Europe 
saved from Moslem rule. 

1856. End of Crimean War; Treaty of Paris; European 
agreement not to interfere in domestic affairs of 
Turkey. 

1878. Treaty of Berlin ; independence of Bulgaria secured ; 
Anglo-Turkish Treaty; England occupies Cyprus — 
agrees to defend the frontier of Asiatic Turkey 
against Eussia, on condition that the sultan exe- 
cute fundamental reforms in Asiatic Turkey. 



CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM COMPAEED. 



The Aggressive 
Command. 



" Go ye into all the world, and preach 
the gospel to every creature." Mark xvi. 15. 

"Fight thou against them until they 
pay tribute by right of subjection, and 
they be reduced low." Koran^ chap. ix. 
L 29. 



The Motto. 



"There is one God and one Mediator 
between God and man, the man Christ 
Jesus." 1 Tim. ii. 5. 

"There is no God but God, and Mo- 
hammed is his apostle." 



The Treatment 

OF Enemies. 



" Love your enemies." Matt. v. 44. 

"O Lord of all creatures! O Allah! 
destroy the infidels and polytheists, thine 
enemies, the enemies of the religion! 
Give them and their families, their 
women, their children, etc., as booty to 
the Moslems, O Lord of all creatures!" 
— Mohammedan Missionary Prayer, 



12 



THE MOHAMMEDAN 
MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 



A T the beginning of tlie seventh, century 
-^^ there occurred two events of momentous 
importance. Though geographically remote 
from each other, and not often associated in 
the mind of the Christian student, they were 
providentially related in the most intimate 
manner, as bearing upon the welfare of the 
race and the future development of Christ's 
kingdom in the world. 

One was the rise of the Mohammedan re- 
ligion — the other the christianization of the 
Saxon race in Britain. 

It is the purpose of the writer in the 
following pages to show the evident plan and 
providence of God in the past, present and 



13 



14 THE MOHAMMEDAN 

future relations of the Anglo-Saxon Chris- 
tian race to the Mohammedan world. 

God has been preparing Christianity for 
Islam ; he is now preparing Islam for 
Christianity. The Roman power and the 
Greek language prepared the way for the 
coming of Christ and the giving of the gos- 
pel to the world. Anglo-Saxon power and 
the Arabic language, the sacred language of 
the Koran J are preparing the way for giving 
the word of Christ, and Christ the Word, to 
the millions of the Mohammedan world. 

The Mohammedan religion arose, in the 
providence of God, as a scourge to the idol- 
atrous Christianity and the pagan systems 
of Asia and Africa— a protest against poly- 
theism, and a preparation for the future con- 
version to a pure Christianity of the m_ulti- 
tude who have fallen under its extraordinary 
power. 

The religion of Islam has been styled the 
'^ quarantine of the nations," and in the ap- 
prehension of Christian faith it must be re- 



MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 15 

garded as a step in advance of all pagan 
systems, and yet falling far sliort of the 
morality and spirituality of the gospel, and 
destitute of any provision for human re- 
demption. 

When Gibbon declared that the Islamic 
motto, " There is no God but God, and Mo- 
hammed is his apostle," asserts an "eternal 
truth and an eternal lie," he truly expressed 
its duplex and inconsistent character. 

Mohammed unfurled his standard in 622 
A. D., when he fled from Mecca to El Medina 
("the city"). This Hejra, or "flight," is 
the beginning of the Mohammedan era. 
The religion of Islam spread rapidly over 
Arabia, and thence northward over Palestine 
and Syria. Khaled, the "Sword of God," 
captured the cities and towns of Syria ; ten 
thousand Christian churches were either 
destroyed or converted into Mohammedan 
mosques. The cities of Syria and Palestine 
to-day are filled with mosques whose archi- 
tecture betrays their Christian origin. The 



16 THE MOHAMMEDAN 

splendid mosque of Amweh, in Damascus, 
was the church of St. John the Baptist; 
the mosque of Aksa in Jerusalem was the 
church of Justinian ; and the world-re- 
nowned mosque of Constantinople was the 
church of Agia Sophia. 

Sweeping into Africa, the scimitar of the 
Moslems carried the Koran into Egypt, far 
up the Nile, across Northern Africa to Tunis, 
Algiers and Morocco ; and in 711 a. d. the 
Mohammedan general Tharyk crossed the 
Straits into Europe, and called the great 
rock on the northern side, from his own 
name, Jebel Tharyk, " mountain of Tharyk," 
now called, by a corruption of the Arabic 
words, Gibraltar. 

In twenty-one years the Moslems had 
subjugated Spain, but in 732 their progress 
into France was checked by Charles Martel, 
who in the battle of Poictiers defeated the 
invading army and saved Western Europe 
from becoming a Mohammedan province. 
The history of the Arabs in Spain is too 



MISSIONARY PROBLEM, 17 

familiar to need more than a mere allusion, 
but it is a significant coincidence in history 
that in the year 1492 — the very year in 
which Columbus discovered America, and 
thus opened a new field for the growth and 
development of that christianized Anglo-Sax- 
on race which was destined to wield so mighty 
an influence upon the future of the Mo- 
hammedan nations — Ferdinand overthrew the 
last Spanish Mohammedan army at the gates 
of Granada, and the Moslems were driven 
back into Africa. In the following century 
it was a common proverb in Spain, " As hard 
to find as Mohammed in Spain, ^' showing 
that the Moslem occupation of more than 
seven hundred years in Spain was at an end 
for ever. Turning northward from Arabia, 
the political and literary power of Islam 
reached its highest glory in Baghdad under 
the Caliphs. This was the golden age of 
Arabic literature. The Caliphs used their 
wealth and power in translating into Arabic 
the best classics of Greece. Translations of 



18 THE MOHAMMEDAN 

Plato, Aristotle, Hippocrates and Euclid and 
other authors into Arabic found their way 
down the Mediterranean into Spain and 
France; and there are in the University 
Library of Paris more ancient Arabic 
manuscripts than can be found in the 
whole Turkish empire. 

The armies of the Prophet by rapid con- 
quests subdued in turn Persia and Afghan- 
istan, and overran a large part of India. 
Thence they moved on through Central 
Asia into China ; and to-day there are four 
millions of Moslems in China, of whom two 
hundred thousand live in Peking, the capital 
of the Flowery Kingdom. 

A new factor now appeared in history. 
The Tartar Turks, a pagan race from Cen- 
tral Asia, conquered the empire of the Arab 
caliphs, and were conquered by its religion ; 
they became Mohammedans. Then began 
the struggle between the rising Ottoman 
power and the tottering empire of the 
Greeks. Step by step, the Turks pushed 



MISSIONARY PROBLEM, 19 

the Greeks to the westward, and in the year 
1453, Mohammed 11. unfurled the standard 
of the Prophet on the towers of Constantino- 
ple. In the previous year (1452) the art of 
printing was perfected by Guttenburg, Faust 
and Schoeffer, preparing the way for the re- 
vival of letters. The capture of Constanti- 
nople in 1453 threw the Greek scholars of 
the East into a panic at the advance of the 
infidel host, and not a few of them fled to 
Southern Europe, bearing with them the 
Greek language, Greek literature and the 
Greek New Testament. Many were appoint- 
ed 23rofessors in the universities of Italy and 
Southern Europe, and thus awakened an in- 
terest in the study of the Greek and prepared 
the way for the development of Bible study 
and the translation of the New Testament 
into the languages of Europe in the time 
of the Reformation. 

The Mohammedan Turkish power now 
attempted the conquest of Europe from the 
East, as the Mohammedan Moorish power 



20 THE MOHAMMEDAN 

had tried it from the West. It was not un- 
til the year 1683 that the Turks were finally- 
defeated on the 12th of September at the 
gates of Vienna by Sobieski, and the Mos- 
lems were driven back across the Danube. 

In the year 1878, by the terms of the 
Treaty of Berlin, and as the result of the 
Eusso-Turkish war, the Turkish territory 
in Europe was narrowed down to a mere 
belt extending across from the Black Sea to 
the Adriatic, including East Roumelia (or 
Southern Bulgaria), Macedonia, Thessaly 
and Albania. 

The caliphate, or succession of Moham- 
med, belongs legally to the Arab family of 
Koreish, the family of the Prophet. In 
1517 the Turkish sultan, Selim L, conquered 
Syria and Egypt, and brought with him to 
Constantinople Motawekkel Billah, the last 
titular caliph of the family of Abbas. From 
this descendant of Dahir Billah, the thirty- 
fifth caliph of Baghdad, Selim "procured the 
cession of his claims, and obtained the right 



MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 21 

to deem himself the shadow of God upon 
earth. Since then the Ottoman padishah 
has been held to inherit the rights of Omar 
and Haroun, and to be the legitimate com- 
mander of the Faithful, and, as such, pos- 
sessed of plenary temporal and spiritual au- 
thority over the followers of Mohammed.""^ 
The Persians and Moors, however, reject 
this claim, and at the close of the Russian 
war not a few even of the Arab muftis de- 
clared that the caliphate had been forfeited 
by the inglorious defeat of the Turks, and 
should now return to the Arab family of 
Koreish. 

The above is a brief epitome of the rise 
and geographical extension of the religion 
of Islam. It now extends from the Pacific 
Ocean at Peking to the Atlantic in Sierra 
Leone, over one hundred and twenty de- 
grees of longitude, embracing one hundred 
and seventy-five millions of followers. Its 

^ Freeman ; The Saracens, p. 158. 



22 THE MOHAMMEDAN 

votaries are diverse in language^ nationality 
and customs, embracing the more civilized 
inhabitants of Cairo, Damascus and Con- 
stantinople, as well as the wild nomad tribes 
of Arabia, Turkestan and the Sahara. 

The evangelization of these vast, organ- 
ized, fanatical and widely-extended masses 
of men is one of the grandest and most 
inspiring problems ever brought before the 
Church of Christ on earth. It is a work 
of surpassing difficulty, which will require 
a new baptism of apostolic wisdom and 
energy, faith and love. 

But He who sitteth on the throne, and 
wdth whom "^ thousand years are as one 
day," will prepare the way in his own wise 
and gracious time. He is already prepar- 
ing the way ; and it is our purpose to notice 
the remarkable interposition of the divine 
providence in raising up in the two great 
branches of the Anglo-Saxon Christian fam- 
ily, in Great Britain and the United States 
of America, the political, religious and ed- 



MISSIONARY PROBLEM, 23 

ucational means and appliances which are 
tending to bring the Mohammedan world 
to Christ. 

We shall thus see how the christianization 
of the Saxon race in Britain just at the time 
when the Mohammedan religion arose in the 
East was a divine plan, the remedy provided 
for the growing moral disorder, the "rod 
blossoming" for future displays of the di- 
vine power as well as the divine love to 
man. 

This great Mohammedan problem lying 
before the Church of Christ in the imme- 
diate future, connected with its fulfillment 
of the great missionary commission of its 
divine Head for the world's salvation, will 
tax the intellect, the faith, the wisdom, the 
zeal and the self-denial of the whole Church 
in every land. 

How are we to reach the one hundred 
and seventy-five millions of Mohammedans 
spread over one hundred and twenty degrees 
of longitude, from the Pacific in China to 



24 THE MOHAMMEDAN 

the Atlantic in Sierra Leone, embracing vast 
nations speaking thirty different languages, 
with diverse climates, customs and traditions, 
yet unified and compacted by a common faith 
which has survived the shocks and conflicts 
of twelve hundred years? 

This problem is even now pressing itself 
as never before upon the attention of Chris- 
tian scholars and divines, and within a few 
years the literature of the subject has grown 
from a few standard and well-known books 
to a vast number of treatises, essaj'^s, papers 
and stately volumes, written in Germany, 
France, England, India and the United 
States, while the observations and testi- 
mony of missionaries and travelers have 
thrown a flood of light upon the moral, 
religious and theological, as well as the 
civil and political, status of this mighty 
system. 

It is our purpose in these pages to present 
a mere outline of the relations of Islam to 
Christianity as illustrated by those features 



3IISSI0NAEY PROBLEM. 25 

in Islam as a system and in the state of the 
Eastern World, which are unfavorable to the 
acceptance of Christianity, together with those 
which are favorable. It is not possible to treat 
the subject in an exhaustive manner within 
the present limits, but we may hope to gather 
together the salient points, that we may the 
better estimate the nature of the contest be- 
fore us. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE UNFAVOKABLE FEATUEES. 

§ I. The first difiiculty lies in the union 
between the temporal and spiritual power 
in Islam. 

It is a politico-religious system. The sul- 
tan is the caliph of Mohammed — i. e. his 
successor. He is the prophet and priest and 
king of the Mohammedan world. The laws 
of the empire are based on the Koran, the 
decisions of the imams and Mohammedan 
tradition. The scimitar was the precursor 
and supporter of the Koran when Moham- 
med and his successors first propagated the 
new faith. 

In the fifteenth century the Crescent ruled 
from Bur mail on the east to Mogadore on 
the Atlantic, and all Europe trembled at 
the name of Islam. In the Turkish em- 

26 



MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 27 

pire the imperial army is a religious army, 
the great national festivals are religious fes- 
tivals, testimony is a religious act, and Mo- 
hammedanism is thus entrenched in the very 
political and civil organization of the empire. 
Apostasy from the Mohammedan religion is 
thus in Turkey treason to the Mohammedan 
state. A convert to Christianity from Islam 
is arrested as a renegade from the conscrip- 
tion. The military authorities will insist that 
they care nothing for the man's religion, but 
he must be arrested as a traitor. This polit- 
ico-religious alliance in the Turkish empire 
is in accordance with the letter and the sj)irit 
of Mohammedan law, and is the great ob- 
stacle to the evangelization of the Moham- 
medans. 

§ II. The second feature in Islam unfavor- 
able to missionary success is the divorce be- 
tween morality and religion. 

The Koran is not wanting in moral pre- 
cepts, nor are the Vedas or the writings of 
Confucius. Yet it can be said that what- 



28 THE MOHAMMEDAN 

ever in the Koran is true was taken from 
the Bible, and what is not from the Bible 
is either false or frivolous. 

Islam is an intensely formal and ritual 
system, a religion of works — outward works, 
not affecting the heart or requiring trans- 
formation of the life. Fasting, the pilgrim- 
age to Mecca, praying five times a day, tes- 
tifying "There is no God but God, and 
Mohammed is his apostle," almsgivings, 
ablutions, genuflections, circumcision and 
repeating the one hundred names of God, 
are some of the rites and acts by which 
the believer purchases Paradise. 

One who fulfills this ritual, in whole or in 
part, is a good Muslim, even though not to 
be believed under oath. Dr. Eli Smith of 
Beirut was said by an Arab to be a very holy 
m^n, ''But, poor man/ he had no religion /^ 
that is, no observance of an outward ritual. 
The good works of Islam are of the lips, the 
hand and the outward bodily act, having 
no connection with holiness of life, honesty, 



MISSIONARY PROBLEM, 29 

veracity and integrity. An Arab highway- 
robber and murderer was once brought for 
trial before a Mohammedan pasha, when the 
pasha stepped down and kissed his hand, as 
the culprit was a dervish or holy man who 
had been on several pilgrimages to Mecca, 
and had been known to repeat the name of 
God (Allah) more times in a day than any 
other man. 

As their whole idea of deen, or religion, re- 
fers to the outward and ceremonial, they have 
lost all conception of the spiritual nature of 
religion, and language itself is so perverted 
that when spiritual ideas are meant to be 
conveyed, or attempted to be conveyed, to 
them, they apprehend only the outer husk, 
the very shell, while the inner spiritual 
meaning is lost. "The minutest change 
of posture in prayer, the displacement of 
a single genuflection, would call for much 
heavier censure than outward profligacy or 
absolute neglect.'"^ 

^ Stobart, p. 237. 



30 THE MOHAMMEDAN 

§ III. The third unfavorable feature in 
Islam is its Ishmaelitic intolerance. 

There is no precept in the Koran enjoin- 
ing love to enemies. It teaches kindness, 
charity and forgiveness of injuries, but 
only to Mohammedans. It knows nothing 
of universal benevolence. 

Islam is an Arab, an Ishmaelitic, faith — 
"its hand against every man." Mohamme- 
dans glory in the name Ismailee, They are 
the people ; all else are hafirs^ infidels. Mo- 
hammed offered to men their choice of three 
things — Islam, slavery or death. All who do 
not accept Islam are looked upon as the legit- 
imate servants of the true believers, and must 
pay them tribute. The Circassians, lately de- 
ported by the sultan from Bulgaria to Syria, 
stated on their arrival that " they had killed 
off the little kafirs in Bulgaria, and were now 
fleeing from the ' Big Kafir,' the Muskobe, 
and that if the Russian kafir came as far south 
as Syria they should massacre the Christians 
of Syria, and then flee a second time." 



MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 31 

In the great Mohammedan missionary 
university in the mosque of Azhar in 
Cairo^ Egypt, where ten thousand students 
are assembled from all parts of the Mo- 
hammedan world, studying the Koran and 
preparing to teach it throughout Asia and 
Africa, a missionary prayer is offered every 
evening in which the whole ten thousand 
unite. The following is a literal transla- 
tion of it : ^^ I seek refuge with Allah from 
Satan the accursed ! In the name of Allah, 
the Compassionate, the Merciful ! O Lord 
of all creatures, O Allah! destroy the in- 
fidels and polytheists, thine enemies, the 
enemies of the religion ! O Allah ! make 
their children orphans and defile their 
abodes ! Cause their feet to slip ; give 
them and their families, their households 
and their women, their children and their 
relations by marriage, their brothers and 
their friends, their possessions and their 
race, their wealth and their lands, as booty 
to the Moslems, O Lord of all creatures !'' 



32 THE MOHAMMEDAN 

In the eighth Sura of the Koran, verse 40, 
are these words : " Fight thou against them, 
till strife be at an end and the religion be 
all of it God's." So also in Sura ix. 29 : 
** Fight thou against them \i. e. the Chris- 
tians and Jews] until they pay tribute by 
right of subjection, and they be reduced 
low '' {i. e. utterly humiliated). 

On a recent public occasion in Beirut, 
after the ofl&cial reading of a firman of the 
sultan Abd-ul-Hamid guaranteeing absolute 
equality and liberty to all the sects of the 
empire, and granting to the Christians the 
right of military service and office, the 
pasha, an enlightened and liberal man, 
asked an old Mohammedan sheikh of the 
orthodox school to close the ceremony with 
prayer. All the company arose, when the 
sheikh, a venerable, white-bearded dignitary, 
stepped forward and prayed as follows : " O 
Allah, grant the victory to His Imperial 
Majesty the sultan Abd-ul-Hamid Khan. 
Destroy all his enemies, destroy the Eus- 



MISSIONARY PROBLEM, 33 

sians; O Allah, destroy the infidels. Tear 
them in tatters, grind them in powder, rend 
them in fragments, because they are the 
enemies of the Mohammedans." He was 
then about to proceed when the mufti, or 
chief interpreter of the Koranic law, stepped 
forward, stopped him and whispered in his 
ear, when he proceeded : " O Allah, destroy 
the enemies of the Mohammedans, because 
they are also the enemies of the Christians 
and of the Jews. Amen." This was an 
orthodox Mohammedan prayer, such as the 
orthodox constantly use, and this venerable 
sheikh was unable to grasp the idea that 
Christians and Jews have any other right 
but the right of serving the faithful and 
being cut off in answer to their prayers. 

This spirit of intolerance has engendered 
a haughty, overbearing feeling and deport- 
ment toward all others, which is intensified 
in proportion to their own ignorance. Mo- 
hammedan arrogance is encouraged by the 
assurance of the Koran (Sura iii. 106) : ^^ Ye 



34 THE MOHAMMEDAN 

are the best nation that hath been raised up 
unto mankind." What more is needed to 
prove that they are superior to all others? 
They know little or nothing of geography, 
science or European civilization. Their ex- 
clusive spirit appears in a striking manner 
in the Turkish imperial law forbidding 
Christians from entering the army, as the 
army is composed of the " faithful," whose 
business is to fight for the faith. This law 
has occasioned the greatest political and ma- 
terial loss to the sultan, who has thus alien- 
ated and embittered millions of his Christian 
subjects. 

Whenever Islam holds the sword it uses 
it for the oppression and humiliation of all 
infidels, but when it loses the military con- 
trol it submits with fatalistic sullenness. 

§ IV. The fourth unfavorable feature in 
Islam is its destruction of the family through 
polygamy and concubinage. 

One has said {Stohart, p. 229) that "an 
evil code of ethics, enjoined by the national 



MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 35 

faith and accepted, by its appeal to a divine 
origin, as the final and irrevocable standard 
of morality, presents an insuperable barrier 
to the regeneration and progress of a na- 
tion." — " Yet such is the position which 
the Koran has taken." 

Mohammed distinctly sanctioned polyg- 
amy, allowing each Muslim to take four 
legal wives (Sura iv. 3), and in addition to 
these, as concubines, the slave-girls " which 
their right hands possess" (Sura Ixx. 30) — 
that is, purchased or captured in war. " In 
reality, the number of wives is practically 
unlimited, as divorce and exchange are al- 
lowed with little or no restraint." ^'The 
husband may divorce his wives without 
any assigned reason and without warning, 
may rebuke, imprison and scourge them, 
and the dishonored wife has almost no 
means of redress." "The husband may 
twice divorce and twice take back the 
same woman, but if he a third time divorce 
her, she cannot again become his wife till 



36 THE MOHAMMEDAN 

she have married (cohabited with) and 
been divorced from some other man " 
(Sura ii. 230). 

Ordinarily, the poorer Mohammedans 
content themselves with one wife, but what 
peace and domestic happiness can there be 
where the wife may at any moment be 
turned away by the caprice of her hus- 
band ? " Some Mohammedans make a 
habit of continually changing their wives." 
One author speaks of " young men who 
have had twenty and thirty wives, a new 
one every three months ;" and there is 
nothing in the Koran to prevent such a 
brutal course of action. The Koranic doc- 
trine of polygamy utterly destroys the 
sanctity and purity of the family, brutal- 
izes the man and degrades the woman. 
It has been gravely claimed that polyg- 
amy lessens sensuality, and is an advance 
on the morality of civilized Christian na- 
tions. The contrary is true. It has made 
sensuality in its most beastly forms the 



MISSIONARY PROBLEM, 37 

rule, and not the exception. It uproots 
the family economy, order and discipline, 
and fosters unrestrained passion and lust. 
No intelligent Mohammedan defends it on 
the ground that it promotes domestic vir- 
tue, happiness or family discipline : it is 
defended on the ground of its divine in- 
stitution in the Koran. 

It is the opinion of Sir William Muir that 
woman " possessed more freedom, and exer- 
cised a healthier and more legitimate influ- 
ence, under the pagan institutions of Arabia 
before the time of Mohammed than under 
the influence of Islam." Stobart quotes the 
language of Sallust with regard to the prac- 
tice of polygamy among the ancient Moors 
and Numidians : " No one marries a woman 
for a companion — pariter omnes viles suntf^ 
and the same may be said of Mohammedan 
women to-day. Polygamy is a mighty ob- 
stacle to Christianity in all lands, Moham- 
medan or pagan, and nowhere is it more 
firmly entrenched than among those who 



38 THE MOHAMMEDAN 

defend it on the ground of a positive divine 
ordinance. 

There naturally results from polygamy — 
§ V. Fifthly^ the degradation of ivoman. 
The Moslems say that ^^ women are only 
superior in craft and cunning." "There 
are three classes of persons who have no 
religion — Bedawin Arabs, muleteers and 
women." Mohammed declared that when 
he looked down into hell, he found the 
greater part of the wretches confined there 
to be women. The whole Mohammedan 
treatment of women rests on the assump- 
tion that woman cannot he trusted. Wo- 
men are not allowed to eat with their hus- 
bands, to enter the floor of the mosques 
nor to read the Koran, except in very 
rare cases. Should a woman be allowed 
to learn the Koran, she is placed in one 
room with her female attendants, while the 
teacher, a blind sheikh, sits in the adjoin- 
ing room and teaches her orally through 
the half-opened door. The very meanest 



MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 39 

Muslim will liave in Paradise eighty tliou- 
sand servants, seventy-two houris, or girls 
of Paradise, besides the wives he had in 
this world, though it is the general opinion 
that the wives of this world will be ex- 
cluded from the society of their husbands 
in Paradise, and go into a separate place 
of happiness. The Koran does distinctly 
affirm that " God will bring the believing 
men and the believing women into gardens 
'neath whose trees the rivers flow" (Sura 
xlviii. 5) ; also, " Male and female believ- 
ers shall enter Paradise, nor shall they be 
wronged the skin of a date-stone," 

But even on the supposition that the 
Koran allows women a reunion with their 
husbands, what a monstrous perversion of 
all a woman's ideas of virtue, honor and 
self-respect, to be told that she is to be 
but the secondary character in a celestial 
hareem of seventy-two houris of transcen- 
dent beauty and attractiveness! 

Ali Bey says (1807) : "As the Prophet 



40 THE MOHAMMEDAN 

has not assigned any place for women in his 
Paradise^ the Mohammedans give them no 
places in the mosques, and have exempted 
them from the obligation of frequenting 
the public prayers." The Moslem women 
are not instructed in religion. Woman is 
a mere toy and pander to man. She is 
kept closely veiled, threatened with dire 
judgments if she allows a man to see her 
face, beaten, despised, kept in degradation. 
No Mohammedan will allude to a woman 
in the presence of other men without beg- 
ging pardon of those present for mention- 
ing so vile a subject, just as he would do if 
alluding to a dog, a hog or a donkey. I 
know of nothing which so stirs the indig- 
nation of a Christian civilized man as to 
find himself in the company of men call- 
ing themselves decent members of society, 
and yet unable even to mention the name 
of his own revered mother without begging 
pardon of those present for introducing so 
vile a subject. I am happy to say that I 



MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 41 

have never degraded myself by yielding to 
so repulsive and abominable a custom. If 
a Mohammedan finds himself obliged to 
mention his wife^ mother or daughter in 
the presence of other men, he will speak 
of her in the masculine gender, as, " he is 
sick '' or " he is absent," etc. 

Women are kept in seclusion and subjec- 
tion. I was once present in the study of 
Dr. Van Dyck in Beirut when the Moham- 
medan mufti, or supreme judge of the city, 
called. After the usual formal salutations 
he informed Dr. Van Dyck that there was 
a sick man at his house who needed im- 
mediate care. Said he, " He has fever, 
headache and great pain. Will you come 
and see him at three o'clock?" Dr. Van 
Dyck replied, " Yes, I will call and see 
her^ The mufti was speaking of his wife, 
or one of his wives, and yet he would not 
speak of her in the feminine gender, but 
called her "a sick man." 

The Moslems by degrading woman have 



42 THE MOHAMMEDAN 

degraded tliemselves. In a recent book"^ on 
woman in Turkey, which exposes many of 
the vices and abominations of the polyga- 
mous hareem-system of the Moslems, the 
author represents one of the diplomatic 
corps of Constantinople as saying to his 
colleagues, " Enlightened men do not hesi- 
tate to avow that polygamy is like a cancer, 
eating into and destroying our social system. 
To rid us of such a scourge is the special 
work of a patriot. It should be the heart- 
felt wish of every Mussulman to undertake 
and accomplish it; for the advantages — we 
may say the blessings — which result from 
monogamy are immense, and we know how 
to appreciate them. For my own part, I 
could heartily wish that a radical reform 
were set on foot in our social system, and 
that the emancipation of woman could lead 
to the abolition of polygamy. No doubt 
the day will come when women will walk 

^ Les Femmes en Turquie, Par Osman Beg, Major Vladimir 
Andyovich. Paris : Caiman Levy. 



MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 43 

unveiled through the streets, and go into 
society as they do in Europe ; but, alas ! I 
am old, and shall never live to see that 
happy day." 

In speaking of mixed marriages the 
same author says, *'The Koran permits a 
Mussulman to marry a Christian — forbids 
that Moslem women should be joined to 
Christian husbands." ^'This law bears the 
seal of its Semitic origin in the sense of 
lowering woman, who is regarded in her- 
self as but a little cipher. Woman, in her 
husband's view, is but a field ; and in this 
way a Moslem may possess himself of the 
object without worrying himself as to its 
produce. As a field can have neither faith 
nor intellect nor will of its own, it would 
be absurd for a man to occupy himself 
about what a woman believes, thinks or 
wishes : she is absolutely nothing but her 
master's domain." 

The Koran says (Sura ii. 223): "Your 
wives are your field;" and, as Osman Beg 



44 THE MOHAMMEDAN 

SO clearly shows, they are treated as having 
no more rights or honor or respect than a 
field. Sura iv. 38 says : " Men are superior 
to women, on account of the qualities with 
which God hath gifted the one above the 
other." " Virtuous women are obedient, 
. . . but chide those for whose refractor- 
iness ye have cause to fear, and scourge 
themP Whatever other injunction of the 
Koran is disobeyed, this one is well kept 
by the Moslems. Wife-beating, that most 
repulsive and degrading practice, being en- 
joined in the Koran, is so common as to 
be thought not even worthy of remark. 
Osman Beg, in describing hareem-life in 
the seraglio of the sultan in Constantinople, 
observes : '^ Discipline is maintained in the 
seraglio by repressive measures and corporal 
punishments. The first consist in a refusal 
of permission to go out, being locked in, etc. 
Corporal punishments are designated by the 
verb to abandje, which signifies the basti- 
nado on the soles of the feet. In the pres- 



3IISSI0NAEY PROBLEM. 45 

ent century the reforming spirit lias pene- 
trated everywhere, and the bastinado has 
undergone a sensible diminution, at least 
for the person of the sufferer. The prac- 
tice of striking young girls upon the soles 
of their feet, with the risk of laming them, 
has been quite abandoned. Blows are given 
elsewhere : it would be hard to say with 
precision on what part of the person. It 
is well understood that rods are substituted 
for the stick." 

It is asserted that the hareem of the sul- 
tan Abd-ul-Medjid numbered not less than 
one thousand women and girls, who were, as 
all Moslem women are, uneducated, profane, 
slanderous, capricious, never trained to con- 
trol their tempers or their tongues for a 
moment. One can imagine the moral and 
social condition of woman in such a home, 
or such a caricature of a home. The rod, 
the scourge, is the only instrument of dis- 
cipline. Women are treated like animals, 
and behave like animals. 



46 THE MOHAMMEDAN 

It is the testimony of history that the 
Mohammedans are responsible for the whole 
zenana-^j^iem of India, and that previous 
to the irruption of the Moslem Moguls 
(Mongols) the Hindoo women enjoyed 
vastly greater liberty than since that time. 
It is the Moslem theory that woman can 
never, in any time, place or circumstances, 
be trusted ; they must be watched, veiled, 
suspected, secluded. Ali Beg says : " I 
have often seen the people of Morocco 
present the sultan with their daughters ;" 
" he has married two of his own sisters ;" 
" decorum requires that Mohammedans 
never speak of women." Girls and women 
are not counted in taking the census. A 
man having daughters, and no sons, regards 
himself as childless. 

It is fair to judge any religious system by 
its fruits in the domestic family-life, by its 
treatment of woman ; and, tried by this test, 
Mohammedanism is a failure. What worse 
condemnation of Islam can be found than 



MISSIONARY PROBLEM, 47 

the Koranic precept which enjoins the 
"scourging of disobedient women"? 

Alas for the eighty-five millions of Mo- 
hammedan women living without consola- 
tion and dying without hope ! 

§ VI. As a natural result of their treat- 
ment of woman, we find in Islam, sixthly, 
gross immorality. 

The Eev. J. Vaughan, for nineteen years 
a missionary in India, says: "However the 
phenomenon may be accounted for, we, 
after mixing with Hindoos and Mussul- 
mans for nineteen years back, have no 
hesitation in saying that the latter are, as 
a whole, some degrees lower in the social 
and moral scale than the former.'' 

In these days, when so much has been 
written about the high ethical tone of 
Islam, we shall speak plainly on this 
subject, unpleasant as it is. We would 
reiterate the position already taken, that 
polygamy has not diminished licentiousness 
among the Mohammedans. The sin of 



48 THE MOHAMMEDAN 

sodomy is so common among them as to 
make them in many places objects of 
dread to their neighbors. The burning 
denunciations of the apostle Paul in the 
first chapter of Eomans, verses 24 and 27, 
are applicable to tens of thousands in Mo- 
hammedan lands to-day : '' Wherefore God 
also gave them up to uncleanness ; . . . men 
with men working that which is unseemly, 
and receiving in themselves that recompense 
of their errors which was meet." 

In the city of Hamath, in Northern 
Syria, the Christian population even to this 
day are afraid to allow their boys from ten 
to fourteen years of age to appear in the 
streets after sunset, lest they be carried off 
by the Moslems as victims of the horrible 
practice of sodomy. Mohammedan pashas 
surround themselves with fair -faced boys, 
nominally as scribes and pages, when in 
reality their object is of entirely another 
character. A young English lord, travel- 
ing in Syria some years since, entered the 



MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 49 

Turkish baths in the city of Tripoli, when 
he was set upon by a number of Moslems, 
as the men of Sodom attempted to assail 
the angelic guests of the righteous Lot, 
and only with the greatest difficulty did 
he effect his escape from their brutal 
hands. They were arrested, bastinadoed 
and sent to the Acre penitentiary. A 
crime so abominable, unspeakable and in- 
credible, instead of being checked by Mo- 
hammedanism, is fostered by it, and it is 
one of the scourges of Mohammedan so- 
ciety. 

§ VII. Another of the untoward features 
of Islam is untruthfulness , or, in plain lan- 
guage, lying. 

It is often asserted that the Moslems as 
a class are truthful — more so than their 
Greek, Armenian and Maronite neighbors 
in Turkey. There can be no question that 
the nominal Christian populations are far 
enough from the scriptural standard — 
"Truth is fallen in the streets, and equity 



50 THE MOHAMMEDAN 

cannot enter" — but there is little to choose 
between the different sects in this respect. 
I have known men among the Moslems 
comparatively truthful, but as a rule truth- 
telling is one of the " lost arts." It is rare 
even to find a man who can be believed 
under oath, although the Orientals have a 
superstitious fear of an oath. Perjury is 
too common to be noticed, and even the 
kadis, or judges of the Koranic law, are 
notoriously corrupt and venal. According 
to their law, none but Mohammedans can 
testify in courts of law, and scores of false 
witnesses can be found in any large Moslem 
town or city, although testimony is regard- 
ed as a religious act offered in the presence 
and to the very '^face of God." 

Although the Koran enjoins care for the 
poor and the orphan, no poor man can se- 
cure his rights in a Moslem court, where 
everything is done by bribery. There seems 
to be an utter collapse of restraining power 
on the conscience where personal interest is 



MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 51 

involved, and the spectacle of a man always 
telling the truth on principle was something 
unknown in the East before the revival of 
evangelical Christianity. 

Their highest and most solemn oath is 
"by the beard of Mohammed." But in 
these latter days they have found an oath 
of even greater binding force, and now in 
important cases they swear "by the tvord 
of an Englishman^ 

§ VIII. Another obstacle in Islam is the 
Koranic misrepreseiitation and perversions 
of the person and teachings of Christ. 

In Mohammed's day (Sura v. 116) Jesus 
is asked whether he said to men, "Receive 
me and my mother as two Gods besides 
God." Also, "They are certainly infidels 
who say God is the third of three." Mo- 
hammed saw the pseudo-Gospels full of 
prayers and hymns of praise to Mary, the 
"theotokos" (mother of God), and the 
Trinity was in those days converted into 
a positive tritheism, regarding the Father, 



52 THE MOHAMMEDAN 

the Son and the Spirit as three distinct Gods, 
There is reason to suppose that Mohammed 
inferred from the Mariolatry prevalent in 
his time that the Trinity consisted of the 
Father, the Son and the Virgin Mary ! 
Whether we believe that he savf the New 
Testament, and wilfully gave it a Jewish 
interpretation, or that he only heard of it 
through Jewish and Arian sources, it is 
equally true that the Koran greatly mis- 
represents the character of Christ. It calls 
him " Christ the Word of God," and yet 
denounces those who call him God, and 
"repudiates all the leading dogmas of the 
Christian faith." "It attacks his divine 
nature, denies his death, and utterly ig- 
nores the redemption purchased by his 
sufferings and death on Calvary." Sura 
xliii. 59 asserts that " Christ is none other 
than a servant whom God favored with 
the gift of prophecy." 

Yet there is a plain contradiction in the 
Koran with regard to the death of Christ. 



IIISSIONABY PROBLEM. 53 

Sura iv. 156 asserts that " the Jews did not 
really kill him/' while Sura iii. 47, 48 as- 
serts that God said, '' O Jesus, verily I will 
cause thee to die, and I will take thee up 
unto me." The Moslem doctors, in order 
to explain away the latter verse, claim that 
the death of Jesus is still future, and that 
at his second coming into the world before 
the Last Day he will die; and in the city 
of Medina, in the ^^Hujrah," or chamber 
where Mohammed is buried, a vacant tomb 
is left for " Saiyidna lesa ibn Mariam " 
(our Lord Jesus, the son of Mary), where 
at his second coming, on the fulfillment of 
his mission, he is to be buried. — Stoharty 
p. 145. 

§ IX. Another obstacle is the aggressive 
spirit still vital in Islam. 

While it is true that Mohammedans do 
not distribute the Koran, nor even sell it 
to an unbeliever, there still exists not a 
little of the old Crescentade spirit of the 
seventh century. We have already alluded 



54 THE MOHAMMEDAN 

to the great Mohammedan missionary uni- 
versity in Cairo, Egypt, with its ten thou- 
sand pupils and three hundred Moham- 
medan sheikhs as teachers. The central 
and fundamental study is the Koran and the 
Koranic literature, such as Arabic grammar, 
prosody, logic, rhetoric, with Mohammedan 
history and laws. These young men live 
in ascetic simplicity, studying, eating and 
sleeping on the floor, and boarding them- 
selves at a cost of not far from four cents 
a day. They are trained in the Koran, 
and fitted to go forth throughout the Mo- 
hammedan world as teachers and interpre- 
ters of the Koran. They are a real power 
in Asia and Africa, and Christian mission- 
aries find the graduates of the Azhar their 
ablest and most formidable adversaries in 
these great dark continents. 

When Stanley's letter from Uganda was 
published in England, mentioning his prop- 
osition to King Mtesa to abandon his newly- 
embraced Islamism and accept Christianity, 



MISSIONABY PROBLEM. 55 

and appealing to Christendom to send mis- 
sionaries to this great African kingdom, the 
letter was translated and published in the 
Turkish and Arabic journals, which took 
up the subject with great fervor. A Mos- 
lem missionary society was formed in Con- 
stantinople, and subscriptions raised in the 
capital and Syria, for sending Arab Mo- 
hammedan missionaries at once to confirm 
King Mtesa in the faith. The outbreak 
of the Russian war at the time interrupted 
their plans, but it must be borne in mind 
that the Mohammedan world is not wholly 
asleep on the subject of the Christian mis- 
sionary enterprises of our day. They are 
poor in resources ; they have no great Bible, 
tract and missionary societies to raise and 
expend the means and train the men ; but 
they have men, zealous, hardy, fearless, who 
would welcome death in the swamps of 
Africa as the sure passport to Paradise, 
and who carry their Moslem principles 
with them wherever they go. 



66 THE MOHAMMEDAN 

In Dutch India, Mohammedanism is ad- 
vancing steadily. Rev. Dr. Schreiber of 
the Rhenish Missionary Society stated in 
the London Missionary Conference in 1878 
that " there are several regions where Mo- 
hammedanism is steadily winning ground, 
but perhaps no place can be found where 
that progress is faster, and at the same 
time more astonishing and puzzling, than 
it is in Dutch India, because there it goes 
on not only in spite of the government of 
a European Christian nation — nay, it would 
appear that this government itself serves 
to foster and forward Mohammedanism as 
far as its boundaries extend." He states 
that this is the work of Moslem Malay 
officials in the service of the Dutch gov- 
ernment. He also says: "There are few 
proper Mohammedan missionaries in India, 
but every Moslem, being zealous in fulfill- 
ing his religious duties and very ardent to 
propagate his creed, all of them do the 
work of missionaries, especially the so-call- 



MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 57 

ed hadjis, whose number increases year by 
year on account of tlie passage to Mecca 
by steamer being now very cheap and easy. 
In 1875 there were no less than five thou- 
sand six hundred hadjis (pilgrims) from 
Dutch India." 

In the African continent it should be re- 
membered that the pagan tribes find Islam 
a much easier creed to accept than Chris- 
tianity. King Mtesa can retain his hun- 
dred wives and be a good Moslem still. 
Christianity comes with its severe moral 
code — its demand of a full surrender of 
the world, its insistence upon holiness of 
life — and the pagan says, ^^This religion is 
too narrow and severe for me." 

One of the weapons which the Moham- 
medans are borrowing from Christianity in 
fighting Christianity is the printed page. 
The freedom of the press afibrded by the 
British government in India has opened 
the way for spirited controversy between 
the Christians and Mohammedans on the 



58 MOHAMMEDAN MISSIONARY PROBLEM, 

claims of Christianity and Islam. Dr. 
Pfander wrote a book called Mezan el Hoc 
— "The Balance of Truth ^' — defending 
Christianity and exposing the errors of 
the Koran. This was replied to in a 
ponderous volume styled Izhar el Hoc— 
" Manifestation of the Truth " — in which 
the author defends the Koran and assails 
the Bible and Christianity, quoting the oft- 
refuted infidel arguments from the time of 
Julian down to Voltaire. This book has 
been translated into Arabic and introduced 
into Egypt and Syria, although the Turkish 
government has forbidden the publication 
of Mezan el Hoc. Under the new Anglo- 
Turkish treaty we may hope for new liberty 
of the press and for full permission to reply 
to Moslem controversial attacks upon Chris- 
tianity. 



CHAPTER II. 

It is now our pleasant task to consider 
the other side of the picture — the features 
in Islam as a doctrine and a system which 
may be called favorable to the future ac- 
ceptance of Christianity and the Bible by 
Mohammedans, together with certain provi- 
dential facts which tend toward the same 
consummation. 

§ I. The first is their belief in the unity 
of God. 

This is certainly a great advance on 
polytheism and paganism. It is the rock, 
the citadel, of their strength. " There is 
no God but God" is a sublime expression 
of faith. The outward reverence of the 
Moslems for the one God, Allah, is most 
impressive. The one hundred names or 
titles of God are written in letters of gold 

59 



60 THE MOHAMMEDAN 

around the cornices of the richly-ornament- 
ed rooms and courts of Damascus, Cairo 
and other Moslem cities. Among these 
names are — the Omnipotent, the Eternal, 
the Infinite, the Exalted, the Hearer, the 
All-present, the Good, the Merciful, the 
Compassionate, the King, the Only One, 
the All-knowing, the Judge, the Revealer, 
the Rewarder, the Searcher, the Everlast- 
ing, etc. In their belief of God's unity 
they proclaim eternal hostility to polythe- 
ism and all association of another with God 
in acts of worship. 

It has been asserted by recent writers that 
holiness is nowhere ascribed to God in the 
Koran. This is incorrect. In Sura Ixii. 1 
we read: "All that is in the heavens and 
all that is on the earth uttereth the praise 
of God, the King, the Holy, the Mighty, 
the Wise." And in Sura lix. 23: "He 
is God, beside whom there is no god: he 
is the King, the Holy, the Peaceful, the 
Faithful, the Guardian, the Mighty, the 



MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 61 

Strong, the Most High." And when we 
remember the constant identity between 
passages of the Koran and the Talmndic 
perversions of scriptural histories and rab- 
binic moral precepts, and the fact that 
Mohammed had either seen or heard the 
Psalms (as is proved from the quotation 
of Ps. xxxvii. 29 in the Sura xxii. 105 — 
"And now have we written in the Psalms 
that my servants the righteous shall inherit 
the earth"), it would be strange indeed had 
he entirely omitted the title of lioly from 
among the names of God. Yet it is true 
that the Mohauimedans have no conception 
of a holy God nor of holiness of life. The 
moral standard of Mohammed himself was 
so low that we cannot expect true ideas of 
holiness among his followers. 

It is impossible to determine whether 
Mohammed would not have led his follow- 
ers directly into Christianity had he under- 
stood the meaning of the New Testament 
doctrine of the Trinity and the divinity 



62 THE MOHAMMEDAN 

of Christ. The Moslems do use the name 
^^Word of God" and ^^ Spirit of God/' but 
are unable to explain what they mean by 
the terms. The time will come, and has 
already come to not a few of them, when 
they will understand their need of a divine 
Saviour, and cast themselves into the out- 
stretched arms of Christ. 

§ II. The second favorable feature is their 
reverence for the Old and New Testament 
Scriptures, 

It is an oft-mooted question,"^ whether the 
Bible was translated into Arabic before Mo- 
hammed. St. Paul went to Arabia. Very 
early there were Christian martyrs and bish- 
ops in Arabia. The first Arabian council 
was held in 229, when Beryllus, bishop of 
Philadelphia, was convicted of entertaining 
wrong opinions of Christianity. Another, 
in 247, condemned Arabians who held that 
the souls of men die, and will come to life 

■^ See Biblical Monuments. W. H. Eule, D. D., and J. C. 
Anderson. London : 1871-73. 



MISSIONARY PROBLEM, 63 

again with their bodies. It is natural to 
believe that the Arabian bishops would 
have insisted on a due regard for the 
written word of God. They must have 
had Arabic copies of the Scriptures, or 
read the Syriac and explained it in 
Arabic. 

It is said that during the lifetime of 
Mohammed, between the years 569 and 
632, Warka, the son of Nofel, translated 
the Bible or some part of it into Arabic, 
but that the version is no longer to be 
found. It is unquestionable that Mo- 
hammed knew of the Pentateuch and the 
Psalms, which are sometimes written to- 
gether in Arabic manuscripts, and that 
he had knowledge of the Gospels. In 
general terms he speaks of these collec- 
tively as the Scriptures. 

Peland published in Arabic, with a Latin 
translation, a native Arab account {Eelandus 
de Religione Mohammedica Ultrajecti, 1705, 
pp. 19-25) of the religion of the Moham- 



64 THE MOHAMMEDAN 

medans, which, whatever was its age, coin- 
cides with the Koran itself in relation to 
our present subject, and contains an express 
acknowledgment of divine inspiration in 
the sacred books of Jews and Christians, 
as well as in their own. ^^ Concerning the 
divine books,'^ it says, "faith in the books 
of God consists in our being persuaded in 
our mind and confessing with our tongue 
that these glorious books, which he sent 
down from heaven to his prophets, come 
from God ; which ' sending down ' from 
heaven, or inspiration, has taken place 
without creation, and from eternity without 
material production. In these books are 
contained the commands of God, with his 
prohibitions and decrees, promises and 
threatenings, and declarations of what is 
lawful and unlawful, what is of obedience 
and what is of rebellion, and where he 
points out retributions both by reward and 
punishment. All these books are the very 
word of God most high — a word which is 



MISSIONARY PROBLEM, 65 

read with tongues, written down in books, 
treasured in the minds of men. This word 
of God is distinct from letters and written 
words, but these letters and words are call- 
ed by metaphor the ^ word of God/ because 
that is what they truly indicate. . . . There 
are one hundred and four of these books, 
of which the most high God gave to Adam, 
ten; to Seth, fifty; to Enoch (Idris), thirty; 
to Abraham, ten ; to Moses, one, which is 
the Law (Tour ah) ; to Jesus, one, which is 
the Gospel (Enjeel) ; to David, one, which 
is the Book of Psalms ; to Mohammed, one, 
which is the Koran al Fu7'kan, or ' Decider.' 

" He who denies these volumes, or doubts 
any part of them, whether section or sen- 
tence or word, surely he is an infidel. O 
God, keep us safe from infidelity !" 

It would be difficult to doubt that Mo- 
hammed found both the Old and New Tes- 
taments in the hands of the Arabs when he 
gave them his own book, which he pretended 
to be divine. He may have heard of certain 



66 THE MOHAMMEDAN 

apocryphal Jewish or other books, and at- 
tributed them to Adam and Seth and Enoch, 
as did the Sabians. 

The Koran was not to he translated, nor 
could it be carefully read by any but be- 
lievers in Mohammed, who declared himself 
the last and greatest prophet of God. 

About 680 an Arab prince moved John, 
patriarch of the Jacobites, to translate the 
four Gospels from Syriac into Arabic. 
Syriac had lost its ground as a living 
language. Mariana the historian aflfirms 
that Juan, the prelate of Seville in the 
reign of Favila the Goth, in 737, trans- 
lated the Bible into the Arabic language 
with the intention of helping both Chris- 
tians and Moors. '' There are some copies 
of this translation," says Mariana, "which 
have been preserved even to our time, and 
are to be seen in some parts of Spain."— 
Mariana,, Historia General de Espana, lib. 
7, cap. 3. • 



MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 67 

" When Hernando de Talavera, archbish- 
op of Granada, one of the best of men, had 
actually prepared an Arabic version of the 
Bible for the instruction of the Moorish 
population of the city, newly captured by 
the army of Ferdinand and Isabella in 
1492, the cardinal and inquisitor Ximenez, 
the inquisitor-general Beza, and the pope, 
Julius II., not only rebuked Hernando for 
this godly work, but gave him a cruel pen- 
ance of three years' imprisonment as an 
atonement for his sin." 

Sir William Muir has published a list of 
one hundred and thirty testimonies from 
the Koran to the divine authority of the 
Old and New Testaments. Among them 
are these (Sura v. 77) : " Oh, ye people of 
the book (Jews and Christians), ye are not 
grounded upon anything until ye observe 
the Tourah (Old Testament) and the En- 
jeel (New Testament), and that which hath 
been revealed unto you from your Lord.'' 
Sura xxi. 105 : " Verily, we have written 



68 THE MOHAMMEDAN 

in the Psalms, after the Law, that my ser- 
vants the righteous shall inherit the earth." 
Sura vi. 90 : " The Jews and Christians are 
they to whom we have given the book and 
wisdom and prophecy." Sura iii. 2: ^'God! 
there is no god but he, the living, the eter- 
nal. He sent down the Tourah (Old Testa- 
ment) and the Gospels from before, for the 
guidance of mankind." Sura v. 50 : '^And 
we caused Jesus the son of Mary to follow 
in their (the prophets') footsteps, attesting 
the Scripture of the Tourah, which preceded 
him ; and we gave him the Gospel, wherein 
is guidance and light, which attests the 
Tourah that preceded it, and a direction 
and an admonition to the pious." Sura 
ix. 113 : ^^And whether the believers slay 
or be slain, the promise of God thereupon 
is true in the Tourah and in the Gospel 
and in the Koran." 

The only serious difficulty in the way of 
a general reception of the Bible by the 
Mohammedans is the charge by Moslem 



MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 69 

writers that Christians have corrupted the 
Bible. If you can convince a Moham- 
medan that you have the genuine Old and 
New Testaments mentioned in the Koran, 
he will press it to his lips and his forehead 
and read it with reverence ; and thousands 
of copies of the Bible have already been 
sold among them. 

§ III. They also reverence Christ as the 
greatest of all the prophets before Mo- 
hammed. 

They always speak of him as Sayidna 
Aiesa, "our lord Jesus/' as they say "our 
lord Moses" and "our lord Mohammed." 
On the great mosque of Amweh in Damas- 
cus is a beautiful minaret called "the min- 
aret of Jesus the son of Mary ;" and the 
Moslems believe that Christ will descend 
upon this minaret at the Last Day to judge 
the world. I once knew a Mohammedan 
pasha to bastinado a Moslem for cursing 
the name of Christ. 

§ IV. Again, although they regard all 



70 THE MOHAMMEDAN 

but themselves as infidels, they have espe- 
cial respect for Christians and Jews as 
the '' people of a booh"" — Ehel Kitab. 

At the time of the massacre of the Chris- 
tians in Damascus in 1860 by a fanatical 
mob of Druses, Moslems, Turkish soldiers 
and Koords, Abd-ul-Kadir, the Algerine 
emir, a man learned in the Koran and of 
high personal character, charged down upon 
the bloodthirsty mob with his faithful body- 
guard of one hundred Algerines, crying, " Ye 
are the infidels. Will ye massacre the peo- 
ple of a book, who are paying tribute to our 
sultan and theirs ?" He turned the tide of 
blood and rescued twelve thousand Christians 
from a terrible death, and when the news of 
his noble conduct reached Christian lands 
he received decorations from all the govern- 
ments of Europe, and from the United States. 

§ V. It is also a favorable feature that 
the Mohammedans hate idols and idolatry 
with perfect hatred. 

Never was such an iconoclastic uprising 



MISSIONABY PROBLEM, 71 

as that of the followers of Khaled and Omar 
in their conquest of Syria and Egypt, and 
of successive Moslem leaders in Asia and 
Africa. When the king of Lahore in the 
year 997 begged the victorious Mahmoud 
of Ghuzni to sjiare the temple of Tannas- 
sar, the most holy place, the very Mecca, 
of the Hindoos, Mahmoud replied that " the 
followers of Mohammed were vowed to root 
out idolatry." The shrine of the god was 
pillaged and the image of Juggoom smash- 
ed into a thousand atoms, which were sent 
to pave the streets of Ghuzni, Mecca and 
Baghdad. The old Greek and Roman 
statues still remaining in Syria, Palestine 
and Egypt in the time of Mohammed were 
thrown down, decapitated and defaced. No 
less than ten thousand Oriental Christian 
churches filled with pictures and images 
were condemned to the same fate as idol 
shrines, and either destroyed by being 
pulled down or purged of idols and con- 
verted into mosques. 



72 THE MOHAMMEDAN 

The same spirit marks their course to-day 
in Central Africa, in Dutch India and in 
China. For ages they believed that all 
Christians were equally idolatrous in the 
use of images and pictures as objects of 
worship, and they hated all alike. It is 
only within the past half century that they 
have learned that there is a vast body of 
Christians who believe in Christ and hate 
idolatry as earnestly as themselves. When 
the time comes for their conversion to 
Christianity, as it must come, it will not 
be to Latin or Greek Christianity, but to 
the simpler and purer form of the Protest- 
ant evangelical faith. 

§ VI. Another characteristic of Moham- 
medans is their reverence for law. 

Their laws are religious, embodied in the 
Koran, the Sunna and the opinions of the 
imams. They are trained to obedience to 
law. Many of their laws are good, though 
better adapted to a primitive pastoral or 
nomad state of society than to the modern 



MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 73 

state with its commercial and international 
relations. Intense as is their adherence to 
the Koran, yet when the existing govern- 
ment, whether Mohammedan as in Turkey, 
or Christian as in India, enacts a law, they 
are ready to obey, and whenever there is a 
seeming conflict between the old Koranic 
law and the modern code, their muftis stand 
ready with legal opinions to reconcile the 
apparent or real contradiction, set aside the 
old and legalize the new. This regard for 
law makes them readily acquiescent in the 
existing order of things, whether the ruler 
be Mohammedan or Christian. 

§ VII. Again, it is greatly in favor of the 
Mohammedans that as a rule they practice 
total abstinence from intoxicating drinhs. 

One of the chief reasons which moved 
Mohammed to prohibit the use of wine 
was undoubtedly to make them different 
from Christians, Jews and pagans, all of 
whom used wine. Abstinence on the part 
of the Moslems is a part of their ritual. 



74 THE MOHAMMEDAN 

They are promised rivers of wine in Para- 
dise, but forbidden its use on earth. The 
orthodox will hardly cultivate grapes, fear- 
ing the evil effects of wine. The use of 
coffee as a universal beverage in the East 
has had much to do with the temperate 
habits of the people ; coffee is always offer- 
ed to guests and transient callers. There 
are many of the official class, especially 
among the Osmanli Turks, who drink to 
excess, but they are the exceptions to the 
rule. I have known the Mohammedan 
pashas repeatedly to shut up every grog- 
shop in the town, and only allow them 
opened again by the protests of some 
European consul whose proteges were en- 
gaged in the traffic. 

§ VIII. It is also an important element 
in Mohammedan character that they all be- 
lieve in the need of a religion and in the 
certainty of future retribution. 

They have no respect for a man who has 
no religion. 



MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 75 

§ IX. The doctrine of fate ^ and of abso- 
lute surrender to the decree and will of 
God^ are elements of strength in the Mos- 
lem character. 

In times of pestilence, when others flee, 
the Moslems stand at their posts. What- 
ever may be said of the wisdom of remain- 
ing in crowded cities during a pestilence 
when a salubrious mountain-climate is near 
and accessible, one cannot fail to admire 
their fearless firmness in the hour of dan- 
ger. This doctrine of fate may yet play 
an important part in restraining the fanat- 
ical passions of the Moslem multitude when 
great movements toward Christianity begin 
to take place among them. Were the Arab 
Moslems to hear to-morrow that the sultan 
himself had become a Christian, it is not 
unlikely that the only thought would be, 
"It is the decree of God;" "It is mukod- 
dar, hismet;^^ "Let the will of God be 
done !" 

§ X. Another favorable feature in the 



76 THE MOHAMMEDAN 

case is the predominant and growing influ" 
ence of Christian nations in Mohammedan 
countries. 

In the fifteenth century the Crescent 
ruled from Burmah to Gibraltar and in 
all Central Asia and Northern Africa. 
Since then not less than fifty millions of 
Mohammedans have passed under Christian 
rule. The Moslem princes of India yield 
loyal obedience to a Christian queen ; Abd- 
ul -Kadir, the emir of Algiers, lives in 
Damascus on a pension from Christian 
France; the emir Abd-er-Rahman of At- 
cheen in Sumatra has just been exiled, on 
a pension from the Holland government, 
to reside in Mecca; and the family of 
Schamyl, the Circassian chief, are under 
Russian support and protection — to say 
nothing of the other Central Asian chiefs 
who are now subjects of Russia. 

Of the estimated one hundred and sev- 
enty-five millions of Mohammedans in the 
world — 



MISSIONARY PROBLEM, 77 

England in India rules over 41,000,000 

Eussia in Central Asia " 6,000,000 

France in Africa " 2,000,000 

Holland in Java and Celebes " 1,000,000 

Under Christian governments, 50,000,000 

It is religiously wrong to pay tribute to 
infidels, and yet nearly one-third of the 
Mohammedan world is under infidel rule. 

It is generally conceded that the political 
power and unity of Islam is to-day the chief 
remaining pillar of its strength. When this 
is broken, and Moslems can no longer col- 
lect tribute from infidels, wage against them 
successful wars, replenish their polygamous 
hareems with slave-girls, and enforce their 
own politico-religious calendar of fasts, feasts 
and civil regulations upon others than their 
own sect, they will be far more accessible to 
argument and reason. When the scimitar 
falls their confidence in their own system 
will fall. A highly-educated Mohammedan 
Egyptian recently remarked to Rev. T. P. 



78 THE MOHAMMEDAN 

Hughes, an English missionary, ^^No intel- 
ligent man believes in the teaching of the 
Moslem divines, for our religion is not in 
keeping with the progress of thought." 

Islam is losing its vital power in its old 
seats. Mr. Hughes justly remarks : " The 
Arabian prophet over-legislated, and, as we 
now see in Turkey, it is impossible for civ- 
ilized Mohammedans to be tied hand and 
foot by laws and social customs which were 
intended for Arabian society as it existed 
twelve hundred years ago ; whilst, on the 
contrary, Christianity legislates in spirit, 
and can therefore be adapted to the spir- 
itual and social necessities of mankind in 
the various stages of human thought and 
civilization." 

§ XI. Another interesting feature in the 
relations of Islam to Christianity is the fact 
that, widely extended as is the Mohammed- 
an religion, it is completely encircled by 
Anglo-SaxoUy Christian political and civil 
power. • 



MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 79 

England holds Gibraltar, Malta and Cy- 
prus; controls the navigation of the Suez 
Canal and the Red Sea ; holds Aden on the 
south coast of Arabia ; the whole of India, 
with three hundred millions of people, of 
whom forty-one millions are Mohammedans ; 
Singapore and Hong-Kong ; the island-world 
of Australia; New Zealand, Cape Colony, 
Natal, the Transvaal and Sierra Leone ; 
and to-day colonies of Anglo-Saxon Chris- 
tian men are pushing their way inward 
from the eastern coast of Africa to that 
great lake-region of Central Africa discov- 
ered by Burton, Baker and Speke, Living- 
stone and Stanley. And not only does 
British power thus encircle Islam, the 
queen of England ruling over more Mo- 
hammedans than the sultan and the shah 
combined, but there is another fact of no 
less importance which will have a direct 
bearing on the future of Islam. It is 
this : that everywhere the Moslems hold 
the English — the Angliz — in the highest 



80 THE MOHAMMEDAN 

esteem. At the time of the annual pil- 
grimage to Mecca, when hundreds of thou- 
sands of pilgrims often meet together from 
all parts of Asia and Northern Africa, they 
compare notes and interchange views with 
regard to their respective countries. The 
Mohammedans of India testify to the Mos- 
lems of the West that they have in India 
what no other Moslems possess — a just 
government and an incorruptible judiciary. 
Say they : " We have British judges who 
decide according to the law and the facts, 
whom no money can bribe, and before whom 
a Hindoo is as good as an Englishman, and 
a poor man as good as a rich man." I have 
heard Mohammedans in Syria say, "Would 
that we had British judges here!" This con- 
fidence in English veracity and integrity is 
so decided that Lord Macaulay forty years 
ago stated, in his essay on Lord Clive, that 
'^ the entire history of British India is an 
illustration of the great truth that the most 
efficient weapon with which man can en- 



MISSIONARY PROBLEM, 81 

counter falsehood is truth. Durmg a long 
course of years the English rulers of India, 
surrounded by allies and enemies whom no 
engagement could bind, have generally act- 
ed with sincerity and uprightness; and the 
event has proved that sincerity and upright- 
ness are wisdom. English valor and Eng- 
lish intelligence have done less to extend 
and to preserve our Oriental empire than 
English veracity. No oath which supersti- 
tion can devise, no hostage however precious, 
inspires a hundredth part of the confidence 
which is produced by the ^ Yea, yea ' and 
^Nay, nay^ of a British envoy. The great- 
est advantage which a government can 
possess is to be the one trustworthy gov- 
ernment in the midst of governments 
which nobody can trust. This advantage 
we enjoy in Asia." 

And this advantage the English enjoy 
to-day to a tenfold greater degree than in 
the days of Lord Macaulay. Wherever an 
Englishman or an American may travel 



82 THE MOHAMMEDAN 

among Mohammedans (for they call both 
Angliz, as having the same language and 
religion) he will be received with hospi- 
tality. Let him journey among the Koords 
of Armenia, the Shea Moslems of Persia, 
the Bedawin Arabs of the Desert, the more 
cultivated Mohammedans of Damascus, Cairo 
and Baghdad, the semi-savage and fanatical 
Yezbeks of Asia Minor, the hardy mountain- 
eers of Albania, or the merciless Circassians 
now scattered all over the Turkish empire, 
and his English name will everywhere en- 
sure him a friendly welcome. 

At the close of the late Busso- Turkish 
war, when the victorious legions of Bussia 
crossed the Balkans, the tens of thousands 
of Circassians who had been engaged before 
and during the war in the massacre of the 
Bulgarian Christians and the pillage of their 
towns and churches fled panicstricken toward 
Constantinople and the Bosphorus. Nearly 
three hundred thousand of these wild fanat- 
ics threatened the peace of the capital, until 



MISSIONABY PROBLEM, 83 

the sultan, at the urgent request of the Euro- 
pean ambassadors, ordered their removal by 
steamer to Asiatic Turkey. Fifty thousand 
were assigned to Syria, and two hundred and 
fifty thousand to Asia Minor, and, to our dis- 
may, the Austrian Lloyds steamers began to 
land them by thousands at the Syrian ports. 
Twenty-five hundred were landed in Beirut 
and quartered in the mosques and khans, 
and afterward sent to Damascus and vicin- 
ity. Seventeen thousand were landed at 
TriiDoli and sent to the region of Hums 
and Hamath. 

I was at the port of Tripoli in March, 
1878, when five thousand Circassians were 
landed from two Austrian steamers, and 
walked down to the shore with the Amer- 
ican missionary, Mr. Hardin, to see the 
strange sight. A crowd of their emirs 
or chiefs stood by us watching the de- 
barkation. All of these immigrants were 
armed ; each one had a sword, dagger, rifle 
and two Colt's navy revolvers. I asked 



84 THE MOHAMMEDAN 

one of the chiefs to show me his revolver. 
He handed me one, and as I returned it 
he patted my shoulder and said, ^^Angliz? 
El Angiiz wa es Shirkas sowa-sowa." He 
spoke in Turkish, and a native Syrian 
standing by translated it into Arabic: 
"Are you English? The English and 
Circassians are all oneP I did not feel 
complimented by the kind declaration, but 
it was a relief to know that these wild 
creatures, who hate the Russians with 
deadly hatred and have little regard for 
the sultan, do hold the English in the 
highest esteem. But for this fact they 
would form an element of the most men- 
acing character in the population of Syria. 
When the port of Batoum was ceded to 
Bussia the Mohammedan Lazis of the vi- 
cinity, to the number of thousands, refused 
to evacuate the town, and prepared for war. 
The sultan in vain ordered them to leave. 
At length a word from the British ambas- 
sador in Constantinople induced them to 



MISSIONARY PROBLEM, 85 

abandon hostilities and return to their 
homes in peace. 

They swear by the word of an English- 
man, and look on the English as their 
friends. At the opening of the Afghan 
war the official Mohammedan journal of 
Constantinople declared that if the Af- 
ghans fought England they would forfeit 
the confidence and sympathy of the whole 
Mohammedan world, as they would be 
fighting against the friends of the Mo- 
hammedans. 

Another fact which has increased the 
confidence of Mohammedans in Syria in 
the Angliz has been the residence among 
them of some representatives of that no- 
blest style and stamp of man, the British 
Christian merchant. More potent than the 
sermons or the tracts of missionaries has 
been the silent influence of British mer- 
chants I might name, who, in the tempta- 
tions of trade, the crookedness, duplicity 
and corruptness of native merchants and 



86 THE MOHAMMEDAN 

officials, "have maintained their integrity 
untarnished, until the highest and most 
sacred oath a Moslem can swear, even 
above the oath by the beard of the 
Prophet, is by the word of an English- 
man ! All honor to those pure-minded 
and upright Britons who have thus taught 
the corrupt and immoral Orientals that 
there are men who will stand to their word 
even to their own loss, and whose word 
becomes the synonym of truths integrity 
and purity ! 

I once stood in a Moslem shop in the 
ancient Hamath and overheard a Moham- 
medan near by emphasizing his word by 
the most solemn oath he could command, 
and he finally clinched his assertion by 

swearing on the word of Mr. B , the 

Englishman in Beirut. 

This extraordinary confidence in the 
English, taken in connection with the re- 
cent British protectorate extended over 
Asiatic Turkey, is an element of the 



MISSIONAEY PROBLEM, 87 

greatest importance in the future relations 
of Christianity to Islam. 

It is not a mere accident that so many 
millions of men, or at least the chief 
nations among them, should have given 
their confidence to the leading Christian 
colonizing and civilizing power of the 
world. 

§ XII. And connected with this is their 
belief that Protedant Christianity is the 
purest form of faith in the world, the 
nearest in doctrine and worship to their 
own. 

Up to a comparatively late period the 
Moslems looked on all Christians as alike 
creature - worshipers and idolaters. They 
have now found out their mistake. They 
say that a Protestant is a man who tells 
the truth and worships God and follows 
the Book. They perceive that Protestants 
alone are zealous in the distribution of the 
Scriptures, and that they abhor every trace 
and vestige of creature- worship. This fact 



88 THE MOHAMMEDAN 

will not be without its weight in the com- 
ing missionary age of work among the' 
Mohammedans. 

§ XIII. Another important fact in con- 
nection with the relations of Islam to Chris- 
tianity is the confidence beginning to be 
reposed in American missionaries by the 
people and the rulers in Mohammedan 
countries. 

Forty years since no Mohammedan sheikh 
would teach the sacred Arabic to a foreigner, 
yet the leading Arabic Mohammedan scholar 
in Syria aided Dr. Van Dyck for years in 
the translation of the Bible into Arabic, and 
novf Mohammedan boys are studying Arabic 
under Christian teachers in American mis- 
sion-schools. 

In the sad battle-summer of 1860, that 
bloody year of massacre and civil war, Mr. 
Calhoun of the Syria mission was at his 
station in Abeih (Ahbay), Mount Lebanon. 
That town is the home of several noted 
families of Druse beys and sheikhs. The 



MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 89 

Druses and Maronites were in deadly strife, 
and the Maronite men had all fled to Beirut, 
leaving their women and children behind. 
Before leaving, however, they brought all 
their treasures to the house of Mr. Calhoun. 
Bags and bundles of gold coin and jewels, 
silk raiment and household treasures, were 
brought and thrown down in the court of 
Mr. Calhoun's house, without a receipt and 
with scarcely a label ; and there they were 
safe. The war went on. Day by day vil- 
lages were burned and the whole country 
was sickened with dreadful stories of bloody 
massacre and outrage. Yet every morning 
and evening the Druse beys and sheikhs 
called at Mr. Calhoun's house to assure him 
that no one should molest him, and that not 
a house in Abeih should be burned or in- 
jured. They kept their word. Then the 
tide turned. All Europe was aroused by 
the news of Syrian massacres, and a British 
fleet and a French army of six thousand 
troops came to Beirut. The French army 



90 THE MOHAMMEDAN 

moved into Lebanon, and with it the refu- 
gee Maronites returning full of vengeance 
against the Druses. The Druses now fled 
to Hauran, east of the Jordan. But before 
leaving they in turn brought their treasures, 
their gold and jewels, to the house of Mr. 
Calhoun for safety. 

During the late Russo-Turkish war the 
town of Eski Zagra fell alternately into the 
hands of the Russians and the Turks. The 
American missionaries, Messrs. Bond and 
Marsh, had conducted themselves with such 
prudence and kindness toward all parties 
that when the city was given over to massa- 
cre, pillage and conflagration the Mohamme- 
dan neighbors not only protected them from 
the uplifted sword of a Circassian, but went 
to the Turkish military head-quarters and 
obtained a guard of regular troops, who- 
watched over them during that terrible 
night of July 31, 1877. An old Moslem 
hadja (teacher) pleaded with the Circassian 
robber until the sweat ran down his face, 



MISSIONARY PROBLEM, 91 

and finally bribed liim to leave the premises 
undisturbed. The Turkish governor also 
treated the missionaries with the greatest 
kindness, and they escaped, after great pri- 
vation and suffering, safely to Constanti- 
nople. 

At a recent dedication of a Protestant 
church edifice in a Syrian village, where the 
workmen had been molested by some of the 
^^ baser sort" of Mohammedans and a riot 
had been threatened, twelve of the principal 
Moslem sheikhs and old men attended the 
dedication-service, joining in the singing and 
behaving with the greatest decorum. They 
had come to show their regard for the mis- 
sionary and to ensure good order on the 
occasion. 

The town of Zeitoon in Asia Minor is a 
rough mountain-village, inhabited by Arme- 
nians, all of whom are armed, brave and 
resolute, and for years not only threatened 
to kill any missionary or Protestant who 
should visit them, but defied the Turkish 



92 THE MOHAMMEDAN 

government itself. Years passed. They were 
subdued by the Turks, and some of them 
embraced the gospel. At length the exac- 
tions of the Turkish local rulers became in- 
tolerable. One hundred men took up arms, 
refused to pay the money levied upon them, 
attacked the police, released a multitude of 
their townsmen unjustly imprisoned, and 
took refuge in the mountain-fastnesses. The 
Turkish local governor telegraphed for troops 
to subdue Zeitoon again. Moslem fanaticism 
was appealed to, and a massacre was immi- 
nent. Just at that time Kamil Pasha, one 
of the most enlightened of Turkish officials, 
long governor of Beirut, and who has a son 
in the Beirut College, was waly, or governor- 
general, of the province of Aleppo, which 
included Aintab, Marash and Zeitoon. He 
telegraphed to Bev. H. Harden, the American 
missionary in Aintab, requesting him to go 
to Zeitoon and act as commissioner from the 
Turkish government to arrange peace with 
the Zeitoon rebels without a resort to arms. 



MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 93 

Mr. Harden accepted the proposal, and set 
out for Zeitoon, attended through the robber- 
fastnesses of the mountains by a Turkish 
cavalry-guard ; but when they reached the 
confines of Zeitoon the guard turned back 
and Mr. M. went on alone. He was kindly 
received. The wild people of Zeitoon, who 
had no confidence in the Turkish govern- 
ment, had perfect confidence in the mis- 
sionary. The Turkish waly, who had no 
confidence in the Zeitoonites, trusted im- 
plicitly in the missionary. After full con- 
ference with the Zeitoon people by day and 
with the rebel chiefs by night, peace was 
settled. The arms and horses captured from 
the police were given up to Mr. Marden, 
to be taken back to Marash. All agreed 
to submit to the government on condition 
that they be relieved from oppression. Mr. 
Marden's report was accepted. The army 
was recalled, the local governor removed, a 
Christian governor appointed over the town, 
and the waly telegraphed his thanks and the 



94 THE MOHAMMEDAN 

thanks of his government for what he had 
done in the interests of peace and humanity. 

Quite recently Dr. Barnum, an American 
missionary in Kharpoot, Eastern Turkey, 
has been appointed by the Turkish govern- 
ment as a member of the board of education. 

A volume might be filled with facts and 
incidents illustrating the same general truth. 

§ XIV. Again, in the conflict between 
civilization and barbarism Idam must be 
the loser. 

The religion of Mohammed and its legal 
code are adapted to a simple pastoral or 
nomad state of society. It is not only not 
adapted to modern commerce and civiliza- 
tion, but is in direct conflict with them. 
Interest, commissions and banks are con- 
trary to the letter and the spirit of Mo- 
hammedan law. Quarantines are religious- 
ly illegal. And yet there are an Imperial 
Ottoman Bank, a code of new laws regu- 
lating interest, notes, commissions and com- 
merce, and a system of rigid quarantine 



MISSIONARY PBOBLEIL 95 

has been established throughout the Mo- 
hammedan empire. The sultan and his 
officers are constantly obliged to obtain 
new fetwas or legal decisions legalizing 
what is religiously illegal and contrary to 
the convictions and belief of the readers 
of the Koran. The advance of education 
and popular knowledge will expose the 
absurdities of many parts of Mohammedan 
doctrine and practice. It is a sin to sub- 
ject the sacred name of God to pressure 
in a printing-press. Geography Avill teach 
them that there are quarters of the globe 
where the observance of the fast of Rama- 
dan would be imj)ossible, and the growth 
of Christian political power will convince 
them that the Jehad^ or religious war for 
the faith, has been fought for the last 
time. 

§ XV. Another fact which places Islam 
at a disadvantage is the superior facilities 
and methods in the hands of Christians, 
and which are the outgrowth of Christian- 



96 THE MOHAMMEDAN 

ity, for the propagation of the Christian 
religion. 

The Moslems have no tract or Bible so- 
cieties, and nothing corresponding to any 
extent to our modern missionary literature 
and material and intellectual appliances 
for enlightening and benefiting the world. 
The Koran cannot be translated. It may 
be paraphrased, as in the Urdu, the Jay an 
and Malayan languages, but only when in- 
terlineated in the Arabic original. There 
is no attempt to print and distribute the 
Koran. There are no Koran societies or 
funds. They will not even sell the book 
to a known unbeliever. Ordinarily they 
would scorn the proposition to explain 
their system to a Christian. Their chief 
propagandism in our day is among rude 
and barbarous tribes, as in Africa or the 
East Indies, where the iconoclastic spirit, 
carried by force of arms, enables them to 
force their doctrines upon the people. 

§ XVI. Another favorable fact bearing 



MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 97 

on the future of Islam is the fact that the 
Bible is noiu translated into the Arabic^ the 
sacred language of the Koran, and into the 
Osmanli Turkish, the court language of the 
sultan, the caliph of Mohammed. 

More than fifty years ago the first band 
of American missionaries landed on the 
then little known and inhospitable shores 
of Syria. They found themselves con- 
fronted by the difficult Arabic language, 
strange customs and the united and des- 
perate hostility of Christian ecclesiastics 
and Mohammedan rulers. The Christian 
population was sunken so low in intel- 
lectual attainments that hardly a Maronite 
or Greek could be found capable of giving 
instruction in the Arabic language ; and 
such was the fanatical exclusiveness of the 
Moslem nlema that for years not one of 
them would teach the Arabic grammar to 
a European, or even to a native Christian. 
There were no readers excepting the Mo- 
hammedans taught in the medrisehs at- 



98 THE MOHAMMEDAN 

tached to the mosques, and no books but 
Arabic manuscripts of a religious or scho- 
lastic character. The missionaries offered 
to the Mohammedans two things — the 
Bible and the Christian religion. The 
Bible was the old Arabic translation made 
by the Propaganda in Rome and printed 
in London. The Moslems replied: "This 
Bible cannot be the word of God ; bad 
grammar cannot be inspired. And as to 
Christianity, we have lived among Chris- 
tians for twelve hundred years, and we 
want no such religion. Look at Greeks 
and Maronites bowing down in their 
churches to pictures and images, offering 
incense, burning candles and abjectly kiss- 
ing in idolatrous homage the work of 
their own hands. There is no God but 

God r 

What were the missionaries to do? Two 
things were to be done : the one, to translate 
the Bible anew into the Arabic language ; 
and the other, to found a pure evangelical 



MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 99 

Church in the Turkish empire which would 
show to the Mohammedans the Christian 
religion in its purity, in a pure morality, 
and in worship free from idolatry and 
creature- worship. These two things have 
been done. An evangelical Church was 
formed. It has grown until there are a 
hundred evangelical churches, with a mem- 
bership of thousands, all over the empire, 
and the Armenian, Greek and other Ori- 
ental churches are agitated with plans and 
projects for reform brought forward by 
their young men enlightened and edu- 
cated in Protestant schools or inspired 
with the influence of Protestant literature 
and enterprise. 

The work of Bible translation was under- 
taken at an early day, and after twenty 
years of labor by those distinguished Arabic 
scholars, Drs. Eli Smith and Van Dyck, the 
Arabic Bible was completed in 1865. The 
Bible has also been translated into ten other 
languages in the empire ; and it is a signifi.- 



100 THE MOHAMMEDAN 

cant fact in the providence of God that just 
at the present juncture of political affairs, 
when, by the Treaty of Berlin, liberty of 
conscience has been asserted to be the law of 
the Turkish empire, the revised translation 
of the Bible into the Osmanli Turkish is 
printed and ready for the Mohammedan 
Turks. 

The preparation of the Bible in the Arabic 
language and in the various vernacular dia- 
lects of the Moslem nations gives the Chris- 
tian a vast advantage in the coming strug- 
gle with Islam. We not only have the testi- 
mony of the Koran to the Scriptures, but 
the Scriptures themselves in a translation 
classical and accurate, printed in a cheap 
and attractive form, electrotyped and printed 
from duplicate plates in New York, London 
and Beirut, and ready for the whole Arabic- 
speaking and Arabic-reading world. And 
in this appears the providence of God in 
the wide spread of the Arabic language. 
Wherever Mohammedanism has extended 



IIISSIONAEY PROBLEM, 101 

it carried with it the Koran, and the Koran 
has carried with it the Arabic language. 
According to the Moslem doctrine of in- 
spiration, every sentence, word, letter and 
vowel-point in the Koran was written in 
heaven by the finger of God and given to 
the angel Gabriel, by whom it was given to 
Mohammed. The inspiration thus resting in 
the very words and letters, the Koran cannot 
be translated. The Arabic is the sacred lan- 
guage. If you would ensure the acceptance 
of the Bible by a Mohammedan, ofier it to 
him in the sacred Arabic. Sixty millions 
of men speak the Arabic as their vernacular, 
and one hundred and seventy-five millions 
read the Koran, if at all, in the Arabic. 
The new Arabic Bible is looked upon by the 
Mohammedans with reverence, and many of 
them regard it as the long-lost Old and New 
Testaments, now recovered in their original 
purity. 

The Bible is now entering the ranks of 
Islam throughout Africa and Asia. From 



102 THE MOHAMMEDAN 

Peking in China to Sierra Leone on tlie 
Atlantic, throughout one hundred and twenty 
degrees of longitude, this living word of life 
is being distributed and read. We believe 
that the day is not far distant when the Bible 
will be sold in Mecca itself. But it is not 
a little gained when we can say that there 
is hardly a Mohammedan in Asia or Africa 
who, when he reads in the Koran the words 
already quoted, " The promise of God is true 
in the Tourah and in the Gospel," cannot 
find that Tourah and Gospel already trans- 
lated into the sacred Arabic of the Koran, 
if not in his own vernacular. It is on sale 
in Arabic in Jerusalem and Damascus, in 
Alexandria and Cairo, in Constantinople 
and Aleppo, in Mosul and Baghdad, in Te- 
heran and Tabriz, in Delhi and Agra, in 
Calcutta and Bombay, in Shanghai, Canton 
and Peking, in Zanzibar and Khartoom, in 
Algiers and Tunis, in Liberia and Sierra 
Leone. 

In addition to the work of Bible trans- 



3IISSI0NARY PE0BLE2L 103 

lation and distribution, tlie missionaries in 
Syria and other parts of Turkey have pre- 
pared and published in the language of the 
peoj^le hundreds of volumes of religious, 
educational and scientific books, have opened 
hundreds of common schools, besides found- 
ing five colleges, nearly a dozen female semi- 
naries, six theological seminaries and a med- 
ical college. These schools have stimulated 
other sects and communities to found schools 
of their own, so that the work of popular 
education is advancing with great rapidity. 

There are now in Syria proper, not in- 
cluding Palestine or Asia Minor, eleven 
thousand children in evangelical schools, of 
whom nearly one-half are girls. In the 
city of Beirut alone are nearly nine thou- 
sand children in the various schools, of 
whom thirty-three hundred are under Prot- 
estant instruction. Twenty years ago there 
were not probably three hundred children at 
school in that entire city. There are now in 
Beirut twelve printing-presses, of which five 



104 THE MOHAMMEDAN 

belong to Protestants. There are nine news- 
papers and magazines, of which six are Prot- 
estant. The number of pages of Arabic 
printed at the American press in Beirut in 
the year 1877 was 12,630,000, and the whole 
number of pages printed from the first has 
been 172,441,000. 

In addition to all these statistics, and 
others which we have not space to mention, 
it should be borne in mind that there is a 
gradual leavening process going on in society- 
through out the East, removing the old prej- 
udice against Protestant Christianity ; a won- 
derful awakening of the popular mind in 
favor of female education ; a desire for books 
and periodical literature ; a willingness to 
read the Bible; a relaxation of priestly 
and ecclesiastical opposition and persecuting 
power; and, in fine, a widespread prepa- 
ration for the preaching and teaching of 
evangelical truth, such as has not been 
known since the days of the apostles. 

§ XVII. And, lastly, it is the universal 



MISSIONAHY PBOBLEM. 105 

belief of the 3Ioslems that in the latter day 
there will be a universal apostasy from 
Islam, when the true faith will cease to 
exist. 

The signs of the latter day are various, 
and among them that the sun will rise in the 
west, and a cold, odoriferous wind blow from 
Syria which will sweep away the souls of all 
believers and the Koran itself. There is 
no prophecy or expectation that all the 
world will be converted to Islam. The old 
doctrine of carrying the Koran by force of 
arms into all nations is going into disuse. 
In Christianity the belief that the world 
belongs to Christ is a tremendous power, 
giving life and hope to the Church. The 
promises of Christ and his command to 
teach all nations imply that all nations are 
to be taught. The promise to Moses, given 
in the darkest hour of Israel's history and 
confirmed wdth the oath of the Almighty, 
"As truly as I live, all the earth shall 
be filled with the glory of the Lord" 



106 MOHAMMEDAN MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 

(Num. xiv. 21), has been ringing tlirough 
the Church in all ages, and is a pledge that 
God's glory and the religion of Christ shall 
fill the whole earth. 

The Mohammedan has no such hope. He 
is the victim of a pessimist philosophy. He 
hates idolatry, and will fight against it, and 
thus clear away the rubbish of paganism and 
prepare the way in a measure for Christian- 
ity ; but it is with him a work of despe- 
ration. Every new province wrested from 
Mohammedan sway, every new defeat of 
Mohammedan arms, every new exhibition 
of Christian superiority in civilization and 
in moral, intellectual and material progress, 
is only a new proof of the rapid approach 
of the inevitable apostasy. 



CHAPTER III. 

§ XVIII. Pt oh able effects of the British 
Protectorate over Asiatic Tiirhey, 

We have already alluded to the con- 
fidence reposed by Mohammedans in the 
English-speaking races. This great fact 
involves us^ who represent the Anglo-Saxon 
race among the people of the East, in great 
responsibility. It throws an immense re- 
sponsibility upon the churches, the public 
men and the government of Great Britain 
in these critical and eventful times. Such 
confidence, the growth of years, the result 
of great overruling providences, the key to 
the hearts and the minds of millions of 
our race, should be wisely used, and not 
abused. It is but one step in that great 
march and progress of events which is to 

107 



108 THE M0HA3IMEDAN 

lead on to results the most wonderful in 
tlie future history of the Church. 

In the wise providence of God, who 
causes even the wrath of man to praise 
him, an Anglo-Saxon Christian queen, al- 
ready the ruler of forty-one millions of 
Mohammedans in India, stands up before 
the world as the protectress of the whole 
Turkish empire in Asia. As we are not 
writing from the political standpoint, but 
only from the position of students of the 
divine providence, we cannot but look on 
with wonder and gratitude to God. The 
question has already passed from the do- 
main of mere politics to that of a great 
and momentous providential fact, to which 
we do well to take heed. 

With all these things in view — the geo- 
graphical extent of the Mohammedan re- 
ligion, the work of literary and religious 
preparation already accomplished, the vast 
expansion of Anglo-Saxon Christian power 
and population, and the confidence felt by 



MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 109 

Moslems everywhere in the religious and 
civil institutions of Protestant Christianity 
— let us inquire what are some of the 
beneficial results likely to flow from the 
new policy of the British government in 
the Turkish empire. 

I. One result, for which joyous and grate- 
ful acclamations will arise from millions of 
the oppressed, will be the abolition of the 
exaction and extortion inseparably connect- 
ed with the system of farming the tithes of 
the agricultural productions of the empire. 
It is difficult for an Anglo-Saxon freeman 
to comprehend what is meant by collecting 
the tithes in the Turkish empire. The 
attention of Europe has often been called 
to the horrors and outrages incident to this 
relic of barbarism. Many of the most 
humane and honest of the officers of the 
sultan have tried in vain to effect its abo- 
lition. The sultan himself has proposed 
it, but to no effect. In practical working 
it is somewhat after this fashion : Some 



110 THE MOHAMMEDAN 

wealthy Syrian, desiring to increase his 
wealth at the expense of his conscience, 
attends the annual auction at the head- 
quarters of the province and bids for the 
privilege of collecting the tithe, we will 
suppose, in the Baalbek district. If the 
tithe of that district is estimated at five 
thousand pounds, he will bid six thousand 
pounds for the privilege of collecting five 
thousand pounds. At harvest - time the 
wheat and barley of each village are gath- 
ered on the village threshing-floors. After 
the tedious labor of threshing and winnow- 
ing is finished the grain lies in heaps in 
the open air, awaiting the arrival of the 
multezwi of the tithes. Days pass on 
and he comes not. The people become 
desperate. The last year's supply of wheat 
is exhausted; there is no bread in the 
village; the children are hungry. Finally, 
the old men of the village go as humble 
petitioners to beg the multezim to come to 
their relief. He answers that he is busy — 



3nSSI0NABY PROBLEM, 111 

he cannot come for a month, or at the least 
a fortnight. They beg and entreat, but all 
in vain. At length they offer him one- 
eighth of the crop if he will come. He 
is inexorable. If the district be remote 
from the influence of Europeans, they may 
be obliged finally to give the merciless 
extortioner one-fifth, one-fourth, or even 
one-half, of their crop ; and from his de- 
cision there is no appeal. He is accom- 
panied by armed horsemen, and the peo- 
ple have no way but silent, despairing 
submission. 

And this system of extortion falls as 
heavily on the Moslems as on the Chris- 
tians. I know of a Mohammedan village 
not far distant from the city of Tripoli, 
Syria, in which the entire income of the 
people was derived from their fruit. The 
village was surrounded with orchards and 
gardens of olive, fig, mulberry, quince, 
apricot, orange, lemon, pomegranate and 
plum trees, and luxuriant vineyards. For 



112 THE MOHAMMEDAN 

several successive years the tax levied on 
this village exceeded the entire income 
from all its fruit, and the people were 
obliged to borrow money at thirty per- 
cent, interest from the Tripoli usurers to 
pay the tax. Such a state of things could 
not long be endured. The men of the 
village assembled and decided what to do. 
They cut down every tree in and around 
that village, and then said to the extor- 
tioners, ^^ What are you going to do now?'^ 
I rode by that village with my brother the 
following year, and the sight of that scene 
of desolation was enough to bring tears 
from a stone. I thought, " What will those 
poor people do?" 

I would like to be the messenger to go 
through that oppressed empire and pro- 
claim to the people that this diabolical sys- 
tem of tithing is to be abolished for ever. 

The abolition of this inhuman system 
will be as life from the dead to the op- 
pressed subjects of the sultan, and the 



MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 113 

word lias already gone out through, the 
towns and villages of that empire that 
through the intervention of Christian 
England this dreadful curse is to be for 
ever removed. Did no other good than 
this result from the late war, it would 
seem to be enough. 

II. A second result will be the curbing of 
the numerous wild and semi-barbarous tribes 
which infest large districts of the empire. 
These are the Koords, Yezidees, Turkomans, 
Nusairiyeh, Ismailiyeh, Bedawin Arabs and 
Circassians. The destructive and irritating 
policy of pitting these tribes against one 
another, on the '' divide et-impera " principle, 
has kept the peaceably-disposed peasantry 
in terror and the empire in constant danger 
of conflagration. That same respect for 
England and the British people to which 
we have alluded above will prove a potent 
aid in keeping these wild, discordant tribes 
in order. 

When the Circassians arrived in Svria in 



114 THE MOHAMMEDAN 

1878 the entire Christian population was 
filled with alarm, lest these wild Mohamme- 
dan spoilers should see fit to add the Syrian 
Christians to the list of their victims. When 
I left Beirut, on the 11th of April, 1878, the 
most of them had been removed to the in- 
terior, but the gravest apprehensions were 
expressed by both Christians and Moslems 
as to their future behavior. The subject 
gave me more anxiety than any other one 
feature in Syrian affairs on my departure 
for America. 

But the Anglo-Turkish treaty has dis- 
pelled these alarms. The British consular 
agents and other ofiicials throughout the em- 
pire can calm these turbulent spirits almost 
by a word. They believe in the Angliz with 
a tenacity of faith that is amazing. 

The same fact is true of all the wild Mos- 
lem and semi-pagan tribes of the empire. 
The English name is a spell. No other 
nationality has such power over them ; and, 
difficult as the task may seem which Britain 



3IISSI0NABY PROBLEM, 115 

has undertaken in keeping that empire in 
order, she can do it with wonderful facility, 
when any other nation or people might fail. 

III. A third result will be actual liberty 
of conscience to Modem converts to Chris- 
tianity. Heretofore, this liberty has not 
existed. Moslem converts have either been 
secretly put out of the way, officially ban- 
ished or forcibly thrust into the army and 
treated with cruelty and injustice. Accord- 
ing to a well-known fetwa or legal opinion 
of the Mohammedan muftis, ^^all the sects 
of infidelity are one." It matters not to 
them how many Armenians, Greeks, Jews 
or Maronites become Protestants, as they 
simply pass over from one infidel sect to 
another. But when a Mohammedan be- 
comes a Christian the case is regarded as 
utterly difierent. 

The army of the sultan is the army of the 
caliph of Mohammed. It is an army of 
believers. No Christian up to the present 
year could be admitted to it, for how can 



116 THE MOHAMMEDAN 

an infidel fight the battles of the Prophet ? 
The military conscription being thus con- 
fined to the one sect of the Mohammedans, 
it is regarded by them as a grievous and 
heavy burden which they are all bound to 
share. Whenever, therefore, a Mohammedan 
becomes a Christian, he puts himself outside 
the military population liable to the con- 
scription. He is a deserter, a renegade from 
the draft, the enemy of his country, guilty 
of high treason, and hence punishable with 
death. The ofl&cials who arrest him in such 
a case would deny that he is punished on 
account of religion. Not at all ; he is pun- 
ished for treason. As long as the military 
system of the empire continues to be ex- 
clusively a sectarian Mohammedan system, 
this state of things will continue. The 
sw^ord thus hangs over the heads of Mos- 
lem converts to Christianity, although the 
^^death-penalty" is nominally abolished. 

But when once the late firman of the 
sultan is executed and Christians are ad- 



3IISSI0NABY PROBLEM. 117 

mitted to tlie army, this regime of terror- 
ism and persecution will cease. No matter 
how many Mohammedans become Christians, 
they will still be liable to the conscription, 
and the one great official ground of perse- 
cution will have passed away for ever. That 
the enrollment of Christians in the army 
will speedily be brought about under the 
advice and protection of Great Britain I 
have no question. 

In India at the present day there is free- 
dom of oral and printed discussion between 
Christians and Mohammedans. It does not 
compromise the government nor endanger 
the public peace. Moslems have the right 
to argue against Christianity, and Christians 
to argue against Islam. It is fair play, and 
all are satisfied. Up to the present time in 
Turkey, Mohammedans have printed books 
against the Bible and the Christian religion, 
and we have no right or privilege of reply- 
ing. As we have already stated above, Me- 
zan el Hoc, a Christian argument against 



118 THE MOHAMMEDAN 

Islam, is a prohibited book, but Izhar el 
Hoc, a bitter invective against the Bible 
and Christianity, is printed and circulated 
by Moslems without restraint. 

All that we ask is fair play and protection 
to all men in worshiping God according to 
the dictates of their own consciences. Under 
the wise and firm and resolute protection of 
British representatives, the Mohammedans 
of Turkey wdll soon learn to respect the re- 
ligious sentiments of those who rely for the 
defence of their cause on argument and not 
on the sword, and Moslems converted to 
Christianity will be unmolested. 

IV. There will be new and real liberty 
of the press. The present restrictions upon 
the press are a clog and a barrier to the 
expression of opinion. Criticism of the in- 
justice and venality of government ofiicials 
is punished as a crime. Liberty of the 
press in such a state of society must differ 
in some respects from what it is in Great 
Britain and the United States, but there is 



MISSIOXAEY PROBLEM. 119 

room for reform of the most fundamental 
character, and there can be no doubt that 
in this respect a thorough reform will be 
effected. 

A respectable and well - known foreign 
resident in the empire was obliged to bring 
the certificate of half a dozen chiefs of 
police that he had never committed a 
crime in their districts, and finally to 
bring a certificate that his portrait was not 
in the '^ rogue's gallery " of noted scoun- 
drels of the city, before he could obtain 
permission to establish a newspaper. An 
important press in the empire was once 
threatened with being shut up for six 
months for having printed a little tract 
on the duty of telling the truth and the 
evil of lying. The gravamen of the 
charge w^as that the tract was an attack 
on the government. 

Until the journals of the empire are al- 
lowed to publish and expose the ways and 
crimes of corrupt ofiicials there will be lit- 



120 THE MOHAMMEDAN 

tie hope of reform. Nothing will so surely 
and rapidly do away with bribery and cor- 
ruption as a free and protected press; and 
this we are sure will result from the British 
protectorate. 

V. Another result will be a new devel- 
opment and extension of the means and 
appliances of education. We would not 
withhold credit from those to whom credit 
is due among the ofl&cials of the Ottoman 
government who have striven to promote 
education throughout the empire. There 
are a few who, by word and example, by 
attending the public examinations of native 
and foreign schools, and even sending their 
own children to them for education, have 
done all in their power to help in the edu- 
cation of the people. Conspicuous among 
these is Midhat Pasha, the new governor- 
general of Syria. But these men are the 
honorable and honored exceptions. There 
are vast districts of the empire destitute of 
schools, and the higher institutions now ex- 



IIISSIOXABY PROBLEM, 121 

isting are crippled in their influence by tlie 
want of the proper governmental encour- 
agement. Here is room for immediate, 
easy and most useful reform, and there is 
every reason to expect that a new era is 
about to dawn on the Turkish empire in 
the multiplication, enlargement and eleva- 
tion of the existing schools, to the incal- 
culable benefit of the people and the ad- 
vancement of light, truth and true religion 
among them. 

VI. Another essential reform, of vital 
necessity, and yet among the most certain 
to be made, is the reconstructioji of the 
judiciary and the admission of Christian 
testimony in the courts. 

What would be said of a law which should 
make no testimony admissible in the courts 
of Great Britain and the United States un- 
less it were offered by members of the Bap- 
tist or Methodist Church ? Yet this is the 
state of things in Turkey. Testimony is a 
religious act, and the mahhameh, or Mo- 



122 THE MOHAMMEDAN 

hammedan court, is a court of religious law. 
None, therefore, but reputedly religious per- 
sons can be allowed to testify ; and as all 
Christians, Jews and Pagans are classed as 
infidels, it is impossible for them to offer 
testimony. And such is the case in Tur- 
key. Firman after firman has guaranteed 
to the Christians the right of testifying in 
the courts, but the right is still withheld. 
The most respectable Christian in Beirut 
may enter a court and give evidence, but 
it will be recorded that " Khowaja So-and- 
so made a statement as follow^s." But if the 
lowest and most worthless Moslem donkey- 
driver is brought into court and gives evi- 
dence on the other side, it will be recorded 
that " His lordship the Sayyid Ali testified 
to the face of God^^ etc. Consequently, 
whoever has a case in court must take good 
heed to provide himself with Mohammedan 
witnesses, or he will have no hope of success. 
The firmans of the past must be executed 
in faot before there will be the first elements 



MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 123 

of true equality in Turkey. To insist upon 
this will be the most important and, I be- 
lieve, the cheerfully -performed, duty of those 
who represent Great Britain in carrying out 
the new Anglo-Turkish treaty. 

In intimate connection with this stands 
the question of a pure judiciary. Often, 
when hearing of the high, unsullied repu- 
tation of British judges in India — a repu- 
tation echoed and proclaimed by Moslems 
and Hindoos wherever they go — I have 
longed and prayed for some divine inter- 
position which would give a British judiciary 
to the long-wronged and despoiled people 
of Turkey. And not unfrequently have I 
heard Mohammedans in Syria give utterance 
to the same longing with the greatest earn- 
estness. I have known important cases tried 
in the enlightened city of Beirut before a 
judge who could neither read nor write 
his own language, the Turkish, and who, al- 
though the trials were conducted in Arabic, 
could neither speak nor write Arabic. The 



124 THE MOHAMMEDAN 

venality of the kadis or judges is well illus- 
trated in the popular story constantly told 
by the Arabs of Syria in their coffee-houses 
and their homes. It is as follows : The 
sheikh Omar had a case in court against his 
neighbor Mohammed. He visited the kadi 
and placed a small coin in his hand, when 
the kadi assured him that on the trial the 
following day the case should be decided in 
his favor. Meantime, Mohammed, hearing 
of Omar's success, went to the kadi's house 
at night bearing thirty gold dinars, each 
having on it the image of an old man 
leaning on a staff. The porter at the door 
refused Mohammed admittance until he had 
given him one of the golden coins. He 
then ushered him into the presence of the 
kadi, to whom he gave the twenty-nine 
pieces. The kadi at once assured him that 
he had not understood the case before, and 
the decision should now be in his favor. 
Omar was astounded the next day in seeing 
his opponent victorious, and asked the kadi 



MISSIONARY PROBLEM, 125 

for the reasoDe Said the kadi, " The reason 
is this: new evidence has appeared. Last 
night after dark twenty-nine venerable old 
men, each leaning on the top of a staff, came 
to my house and testified to the validity of 
Mohammed's claim." — " Yes," added the 
porter, " and one of them was too old and 
infirm to ascend the stairway, so he remained 
with me at the door." 

This story illustrates the popular idea of 
the character of their judges; and it is, 
alas! too true. 

The salaries of the highest judges are con- 
temptibly small, and, as they are obliged to 
live respectably, they supplement their sala- 
ries by selling justice to the highest bidder. 

A thorough reorganization of the judici- 
ary, with courts of appeal in the hands of 
British judges, would be a blessing of un- 
speakable value to millions in Turkey. Let 
us pray that so great a blessing may not be 
Avithheld when it is in the power of Britain 
so easily to bestow it. 



126 THE MOHAMMEDAN 

VII. The last beneJfit we shall mention as 
resulting from the new state of things is the 
virtual and, we trust, final abandonment of 
the policy of non-intervention. When the 
European powers in 1856 bound themselves 
in solemn treaty not to interfere in the do- 
mestic concerns of the Turkish empire, they 
entailed upon the people of Turkey a regime 
of suffering which none could desire to be 
restored or perpetuated. It is not necessary 
for me, nor would it be becoming, to impugn 
the motives of those who made that agree- 
ment. It has passed into history. But it 
is a comfort and a cause of gratitude to 
think that the woes, the massacres and the 
disorders suffered to go on in that empire 
under the non-intervention policy will not 
now be likely ever to occur again. 

In the year 1860, during the civil war 
of Lebanon, when the Druses and Turkish 
soldiers fraternized with the Moslem popu- 
lace in the plan of massacring and exter- 
minating the Christian and foreign popula- 



MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 127 

tion of Syria, news reached us in Beirut 
that about eight hundred Greek, Maronite 
and Protestant Christians, disarmed and 
confined in the castle of Hasbeiya, were 
surrounded by a Druse army who stood 
ready to massacre them in cold blood, while 
the Turkish colonel sat at the gate waiting 
to give them the signal to enter on the 
work of destruction. Dr. Eddy and Dr. 
Bliss of the American mission went to the 
British consul-general, and asked him to 
furnish them with an armed kawass or 
janissary from the British consulate to go 
with them to the rescue of the beleaguer- 
ed Christians. A kawass of the American 
consulate would have been of no use, and, 
owing to the state of the country, it would 
have been certain death to them to have 
gone an hour's ride from the city alone. 
But a kaw^ass from the British consulate 
would have given ample protection any- 
where, and both Druse and Moslem would 
have respected the presence of two such 



128 THE MOHAMMEDAN 

men accompanied with the representative 
of the British consulate. 

They appealed to the consul as the only 
person in Syria who could have aided them 
in saving seven hundred men from massacre. 
But he felt obliged to decline their request. 
He said he sympathized with the poor men 
exposed to danger and death, " but he was 
officially forbidden to interfere in the do- 
mestic affairs of the Turhish empire.^^ He 
had no option in the matter, and, bound 
by the principle of non-intervention, felt 
obliged to leave the poor wretches to their 
fate. 

A few days after a crowd of men came 
running to the door of my house in Beirut. 
They were leading along a shocking-looking 
specimen of humanity, covered with matted 
clots of blood from head to foot. It was 
Jebran Hoslab, one of the few survivors 
of the dreadful massacre of Hasbeiya. He 
said that on a signal from the Turkish 
colonel the Druses rushed into the castle- 



MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 129 

gate and fell like wolves upon tlie unarm- 
ed Christians. Laying aside their guns to 
save their ammunition, they hewed their 
victims in pieces with their swords and 
battle-axes, striking down Abu Monsoor, 
the Protestant deacon, while in the act of 
praying for his murderers. Jebran escaped 
by throwing himself down and covering 
himself with dead bodies, and at midnight 
let himself down from a window in the 
castle- wall, and escaped across the moun- 
tains to Tyre, w^hence he came to Beirut 
in an Arab schooner. 

That was the working of the principle 
of non-intervention. A more humane and 
noble -hearted body of men could hardly 
be found than the British consuls in Tur- 
key as a class, but how often the inflexible 
principle of non-intervention has compelled 
them to refrain from doing what their own 
humane instincts would have prompted them 
to do, none could speak more eloquently than 
themselves. 



130 THE MOHAMMEDAN 

NoWj thanks be to Him who maketh even 
the wrath of man to praise him, if I inter- 
pret aright the new policy of the British 
government, that feature at least of non- 
intervention is for ever at an end. There 
will be no more Syrian massacres, no more 
holocausts of human victims in Hasbeiya, 
Deir el Komr and Damascus. Humanity 
and policy will now concur, in the good 
providence of God, under the benign sway 
of a Christian queen, in restraining that 
" remainder of wrath " which has so often 
burst forth like a pent-up volcano. 

These and many other incidental benefits, 
which time will not allow us to mention, 
will no doubt flow from the new order of 
things now being inaugurated in the East. 

Well does it become us to inquire in con- 
clusion. What are the moral and religious 
obligations arising from this state of things 
which rest upon the Christians of Great 
Britain and America? 



MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 131 

A great work lias been initiated by the 
missionaries, American and British, already 
on the ground. It will be the duty of the 
American churches to increase the number 
of their missionaries, to supply their colleges 
and seminaries with an able, experienced 
and devoted corps of instructors; to push 
forward the work of missionary itineracy ; 
to increase the efficiency of the press and 
the extent of Bible distribution ; to train a 
native ministry ; and in every way to meet 
the invitations of Divine Providence, and 
enter the " wide and effectual doors " which 
are opening on every side, even though there 
be " many adversaries." 

It is not an easy task for me to suggest 
what are the duties of our British brethren 
and sisters in a crisis like the present in the 
East. Would that my feeble voice could 
be heard among all those who love our 
Lord in sincerity, calling upon them to 
pray earnestly for the salvation of the 
perishing in that interesting land ! See 



132 THE MOHAMMEDAN 

to it, Christian men and women, that the 
present guarantees of religious liberty be 
carried out in very deed — that converts to 
Christianity from every sect and nationality 
in that empire be assured of protection and 
liberty to read and practice the word of 
God. Give a cheerful support to your own 
brethren and sisters who are engaged in 
various parts of that empire in preaching 
the gospel and educating the young. 

You would have rejoiced to see a sight 
which greeted my eyes on the 11th of last 
April, when I met on the premises of an 
English lady in Beirut a company of Arab 
girls assembled to bid me farewell on my 
departure for America. Fifteen hundred 
Arab girls, from the ages of six to sixteen, 
stood around me, three hundred of them 
Mohammedan girls. One after another the 
different schools sang hymns of praise to 
Christ, and at the close of a brief address 
to them in Arabic we united together in 
prayer. Just before that I had received a 



MISSIONARY PROBLEM, 133 

farewell letter signed by eight hundred and 
seventy-five Arab Sunday-school children, 
bidding me an affectionate farewell. Shall 
not these Christian laborers and enterprises 
be sustained? 

In the nev/ growth of the missionary and 
educational work in the East new endow- 
ments, new scholarships and new buildings 
will be needed. If the demand for schools 
and books has been great and increasing 
under the old regime, what may we not 
anticipate under the new ? The demand 
for the English language and an English 
education, already great, will become great- 
er year by year. Heretofore British Chris- 
tians have wisely preferred to aid the exist- 
ing American missions in the Turkish em- 
pire, instead of complicating the work by 
establishing separate missions of their own. 
We rejoice in this proof of fraternal con- 
fidence and Christian love. Let us work on 
thus together. Let the two great branches 
of the christianized Anglo-Saxon race go 



134 THE MOHAMMEDAN 

hand in hand to the great work assigned 
us in the evangelization of the Mohamme- 
dan world. Let us go on in the Spirit of 
our Lord and Master, which is the Spirit 
of love. 

We have thus sketched in rapid outline 
the salient points in the relations of Islam 
to Christianity. God has been preparing 
Christianity for Islam, and now he is pre- 
paring Islam for Christianity. The prob- 
lem now demanding the attention of the 
Christian Church and the Christian min- 
istry everywhere is, How to give greater 
efficiency to missionary agencies already 
employed in Mohammedan countries, and 
how to bring new forces and appliances to 
bear upon Islam. 

The Christian Church cannot regard with 
indifference the welfare of one hundred and 
seventy-five millions of our race. The moral 
degradation, the spiritual blindness, the deep 
religious needs of so many men, the pitiful 



MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 135 

condition of Moslem women, the want of all 
that we hold dear and sacred in the Chris- 
tian home, and the utter lack of anything 
like a provision for human redemption, — 
should awaken our deepest sympathies and 
enkindle new zeal in every Christian breast. 
We have only begun to work for the Mo- 
hammedan world. The prospect is cheering. 
God's word is ready ; the promises of Christ 
are ours ; God is overturning among the 
nations, and every turn in the wheel of 
providence moves the nations forward, while 
Mohammedan prestige and power sink rap- 
idly out of sight. In the Russian war the 
greatest enemy of the Moslems inflicted one 
crushing defeat on the political power of 
Islam, and in the Afghan war England, 
the greatest friend of Islam, has inflicted 
another. Christian missions are planted in 
and around the very citadels of Islam. 
Converted Moslems in India are ordained 
ministers of the gospel. Thousands of 
Moslems in Turkey have purchased the 



136 THE MOHAMMEDAN 

Christian Scriptures. Church - bells from 
Christian edifices are echoing the very 
muezzin-cries from the minarets of towns 
and cities. Mohammedan pashas are send- 
ing their sons to Christian schools and col- 
leges, and hundreds of Mohammedan girls 
are being educated by Christian teachers in 
the pure morality and the inspiring hopes 
of the gospel. One thousand Mohammedan 
girls to-day are receiving instruction in 
Christian schools in Syria alone. 

In conclusion, I know of no better sum- 
mary of the crowning, imperative want of 
the Mohammedan world, and of all the 
missionaries who are engaged in laboring 
for its conversion to Christ, than that con- 
tained in the terse expression of my own 
beloved instructor in the Union Theological 
Seminary, the now sainted Henry B. Smith, 
contained in the synopsis of his System of 
Christian Theology — the belief in "an in- 
carnation in order to a redemption." This 



MISSIONARY PROBLEM, 137 

is the great truth which Mohammed utterly 
failed to grasp, and which his followers for 
twelve centuries have been groping after 
in vain. 

Let every Christian missionary insist upon 
the great scheme of redemption, the atoning 
sufferings and death of Jesus the son of 
Mary ; and when the Mohammedan feels, 
as many have already felt, that he is a lost 
sinner and under the righteous displeasure 
of an offended God, he will gladly and 
gratefully take refuge in the conviction 
and the faith that man needs a Saviour 
from sin, and that Jesus the son of Mary 
in order to be a Saviour must also be the 
Son of God. 

A famous Bedawin sheikh from the land 
of Bashan once visited Beirut, and asked 
permission to see the American steam 
printing-press. I took him through the 
various parts of the building and showed 
him the processes of type-casting, type- 
setting, electrotyping, lithographing and 



138 MOHAMMEDAN MISSIONARY PROBLEM, 

bookbinding; and at length we entered the 
press-room. He stood with his Bedawin 
companions gazing in mute wonder at the 
steam-press with revolving cylinder rolling 
out the printed sheets with the greatest ra- 
pidity and precision. He stood in silence 
for a time, and at length turned to me and 
said, ^^Khowadja, you Franks have con- 
quered everything but death. In that re- 
spect you and the Bedawin stand on a 
level, for death conquers us all." I re- 
plied, ^^Yes, we are conquered by death, 
but there is One who has conquered death 
for you and for me — our Lord and Saviour 
Jesus Christ." 

My brethren, that is the gospel which 
all men need. That gospel of salvation 
through Christ let us preach at home and 
abroad, until the kingdoms of this world 
are become the kingdom of our Lord, and 
he shall reign for ever ! 

THE END. 



